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   Kathleen writes:

     From the [1]Freakonomics blog, I found this article: [2]Three
     Things You Don't Know About AIDS In Africa. It's not entirely
     related to the issues you have with AIDS, but I thought it would be
     interesting.

   In fact it is entirely related to the issues I have with the
   scientific status quo. I don't know, for example, that Peter Duesberg
   is correct. But I do know that he simply does not deserve the kicking
   around he's gotten. A sane, rational scientific community would be
   saying, "Well you know, Peter's kind of a maverick and we think he's
   off-base here but he's a good guy who has made some worthy
   contributions, and anyway here's why we think he's wrong." The fury,
   the absolute condemnation, and the utter contempt have always hit me
   as a major red flag. Ditto the idea that just by expressing his doubts
   he's a threat to world health--what, adults are not allowed to hear
   about scientific doubters? Just hearing the doubts expressed is going
   to kill millions of people?

   The truth is that independent researchers--mathematicians,
   mathematical biologists, medical doctors, and many others have looked
   at the data repeatedly and said, "you know, there's something very
   wrong here." Now an independent economist has drawn the same
   conclusion. She takes the standard position that HIV is dangerous, but
   concludes that the numbers we've had thrown at us about how HIV is
   ravaging Africa just don't add up. Which, quite obviously, they do
   not.

   You have here a virus that even the establishment now admits carries
   about a 1 in 1,000 chance of being transmitted through sexual
   intercourse--i.e. if you sleep one time with an HIV infected person
   you have only a 1 in 1,000 chance of picking up the virus yourself.
   Even assuming the virus is all it's cracked up to be, that is wildly
   at odds with the danger that we were all told it represented.

   For years they told us this virus was 100% lethal--that it would "kill
   Clark Kent" in Robert Gallo's words--and that turns out not to be the
   case. In fact, we've got people who've been HIV+ for over 20 years who
   are still walking around healthy as horses, refusing to take any
   medication, and willing to be part of experiments. Yet until very
   recently no one in the research community has expressed much of any
   interest in even talking to them.

   They also now admit that the plague never really ravaged the US or
   European population, and is never going to.

   Ah, but in Africa, it's totally out of control in the black population
   (and only the black population). Which means those primitive darkies
   must be screwing like rabid jackrabbits. Indeed, they often told us
   that as many as 1 in 3 black Africans were already dying of this
   hideous virus. As far back as the 1980s they were telling us that. Yet
   mysteriously, sub-Saharan Africa's population continues to grow at a
   brisk pace. So apparently after the raging epidemic started killing
   off a full third of the population, black African women started having
   babies at several times the normal rate?

   Ah, but it was the rethinkers, the skeptics and the questioners, who
   all along were the nutjobs where were completely in the wrong?

   I linked this earlier, but I'll link it again: [3]Dr. Jeffrey Dach on
   fried watermelons. Still seems pretty on the money to me.

References

   1. http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/
   2. http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2006/061105_mfe_December_06_=
Oster.html
   3. http://barnesworld.blogs.com/barnes_world/2006/11/jeffrey_dach_on.html