Over on Fox News website:
LATEST HEADLINES
– Official: Arafat in Coma
– Arafat Congratulates Bush
Food for thought.
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Cause and effect?Antoine Clarke (Neuilly-sur-Seine, France) · How very odd! · Middle East & Islamic · North American affairs November 4th, 2004 |
 17 comments to Cause and effect? |
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I wonder if they managed to get the details of all those bank accounts out of him before he nodded off…
Newsflash: The Israelis are quoting French sources as saying Arafat is brain dead. So now we know.
The other, maybe far-fetched, but plausible news is that Arafat is suffering an advanced case of AIDS.
Could be why no-one has yet reported what exactly he is suffering from, except to say it is ‘viral’.
Let’s hope its very soon ‘fatal’.
I’m not surprised if it’s AIDS. There are a variety of causal factors for AIDS, none of which include sexual intercourse or blood transfer. Malnutrition or a ravaged immune system due to old age are causes of AIDS as well. Drugs can be causes too. AIDS is a disease, a symptom. Attributing it to just viral factors was simply bad science.
The general public has been totally misled on the AIDS issue, such that even now when an important figure like Arafat is suffering from it, the truth cannot be told because of popular (mis)conceptions.
Anyway, Arafat is dying, and he should be given the choice of a dignified death, no matter how evil he had been in life. I hope he passes away peacefully.
TWG
Someone’s been reading too much Fortean Times, methinks 🙂
Opportunistic infections due to a vastly reduced immune system happen with AIDS; they can also happen due to other factors. In this, the above poster is correct; however, referring to these infections as AIDS when not caused by HIV is not correct in the common parlance. One can have a vastly reduced immune system from other factors (though this tends to be uncommon as those other factors often finish off the victim before they get to an AIDS-like point.) If a factor other than HIV is the prime cause of the immunodeficiency, that factor is what the person is referred to as suffering from.
You could say, “thus-and-so is suffering from Karposi’s Sarcoma” (a weak pneumonia that is killed by a healthy immune system) or that they are suffering from various other infections.
Your assertion reminds me of a joke:
When is lung cancer not lung cancer?
When it’s not caused by smoking.
AIDS is a syndrome, indicated in its very name, in a very specific measure of T-cell count. As such, it is a condition of the body. As to how that condition is arrived at, is due to a variety of factors, mostly poorly researched and as yet unidentified due to the current dogmatic preoccupation with HIV.
If we follow your specious logic, we would be calling lung cancer caused by smoking lung cancer, lung cancer caused by genetics unchecked lung cell growth, and lung cancer caused by virii acquired lung organ deficiency. Same condition, different causes, and thus different names.
Do you realize just how stupid that sounds?
TWG
Personally, I think he suffered a 9mm headache a couple days back, and he is now having the typical dictator’s “sudden illness” while the power struggle plays out.
We call that lead poisoning. 🙂
Certainly, a quick and merciful death.
TWG
It seems that another reason may exist for Arafat’s AIDS, if indeed he has it.
As someone said, it seems the BBC’s favourite ‘militant’ has been thrusting the sword of Allah up the Khyber Pass.
Uhh, AIDS not caused by HIV? Hmmmmm, I never heard about that in medical school.
By definition, the advanced stages of HIV infection are termed AIDS. While it is true that there are other causes of low T cells, and some patients classified as having AIDS as we best understand it today may have something else besides an advanced HIV infection, we do not use that term for cases not related to HIV infection in the current parlance. If, in the future, we find some of the cases we have diagnosed as AIDS are related to something else, and not the HIV that the patient has been documented to have, we will probably call that syndrome something else.
Do you have a medical or other reference for your hypothesis, The Wobbly Guy 🙂 I’d be interested in reading it.
Arafat probably isn’t dying from disease or bullet wounds. More likely it’s poison. If Arafat hadn’t been alert and composed enough to make a public appearance right before being shipped off to France, I’d think Julian was on to something.
MD-I’m surprised you didn’t learn about it in med school. I have friends in med school who complained about the HIV hypothesis, because the amount of virus present just doesn’t add up. There is even doubt about whether HIV exists at all!
Anyway, before I expose my rather skimpy and superficial knowledge on the matter, I refer you to Peter Duesberg. He might be wrong on the drug hypothesis, but his analysis of the HIV theory isn’t.
http://www.duesberg.com/papers/index.html(Link)
TWG
Thanks Wobbly Guy. I wonder if the reason I didn’t learn about it in med school is because I was in med school over a decade ago: still relatively early in the learning curve. And I haven’t kept up because my specialty is dermatopathology (skin diseases).
I look forward to reading more about this.
new subject, I think, but does anyone know how George Soros, admirer of Popper, became so critically irrational, by supporting the carnival of loony left fools that the democratic party has become?
Here is the case for an AIDS diagnosis:
A 75 year old man with a long history of promiscuous homosexual activity develops over a period of months to years a steadily worsening dementia, followed by several diarrhea and weight loss.
Blood studies reveal a low platelet count and no evidence of leukemia. Spinal cord imaging reveals a lesion, for which a biopsy was planned.
Reports from the hospital say they have excluded cancer and his problem is a viral illness. Aides report they were told “He has no immunity whatsoever”.
Present this case to any doctor and AIDS will be high on the list of possibilities.
Arafat’s promiscuous homosexual activity has been reported from multiples sources. His escapades in Tunisia were reported contemporaneously in the press as Arafat sleeping in a different bed every night for security reasons, but it was common knowledge among journalists that he was sleeping with teenage boys. In Ramallah, his “other wife” is widely known and reported by credible sources to have arranged many homosexual trysts for Arafat with other males.
In the Muslim world, homosexual relations are seen an un-Islamic behavior. In the West we would be more concerned with Arafat’s abuse of a position of power for sexual harassment or coercion, particularly the instances involving underage boys. Also, the use of one’s reputation as a terrorist to coerce behavior is a big concern.
Hopefully Arafat’s sexual and financial abuses will motivate Palestinians to reject his legacy and develop a peaceful democratic society.