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The AIDS Cult: Essays on the gay health crisis

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An indispensable member of the unorthodox AIDS trilogy--including The Stonewall Experiment by Ian Young and What if Everything You Thought You Knew about AIDS was Wrong by Christine Maggiore--this book presents articles and essays by several men who have a lot to say about why AIDS happened and why it continues to happen. And it has very little if nothing to do with a virus. Citing every possibility from epidemic hysteria to psychoneuroimmunology to death by poisoning, this book alone does more for AIDS research than 18 years and 40 billion dollars of "official" research will ever contribute. Whether you agree that there's something terribly amiss with AIDS research and official explanations and treatments or not, this book is an amazing grass-roots attempt to open up dialog and encourage the kind of critical thought sorely needed in the highly political AIDS Industry. After reading this book, you'll come to realize that the socially-constructed disease known as AIDS can stop if we want it to--we have the power and always have.

"The AIDS Cult" presents an array of truly mind-opening essays from a variety of radical thinkers. The main message of the book may be summed up, roughly, as follows: The "AIDS" epidemic is not the result of a retrovirus called "HIV". It is the result of a variety of social, psychological, and cultural phenomena, which have mistakenly been slighted by Western medicine in favor of tiny bits of genetic material magnified dozens of times using PCR. The cost of this mistaken oversight is our continuing inability to deal with "AIDS" in a humane and compassionate manner. People always look at me with strange eyes when I start talking about psychological, social, and cultural causes of "AIDS". They often say, "You're nuts, Darin. That's just crap. Boy, do you need some counselling." Yet I wonder who really needs the "counselling"? The fact is, the relationship between mind and body in the history of medicine has always been the RULE, not the EXCEPTION. As anyone who has studied cognitive science or psychopharmacology knows, biochemical reactions in the brain have a tremendous effect on all sorts of bodily functions, including the immune system and the lymph node system. The biochemical reactions which occur in the brain are themselves profoundly influenced by a variety of factors, both "psychological" and "physiological". To argue in favor of a point at which "bodily" illness ends and "mental" illness begins is specious and self-defeating. Unfortunately, the ghost of Descartes is alive and well today, and we can't seem to break free from the shackles he created. Perhaps the "AIDS" epidemic will force us to confront Descartes face-to-face and run him down and give him a good beating. When someone responds to my ideas with "that's crap", or "you need counselling, Darin", the implicit assumption is that non-materialist causes of disease are somehow "not real", or "beyond the realm of scientific debate". I try to remind people that atoms and molecules themselves were "not real" for quite a long time in the history of science, until a group of people began to develop a coherent theory of them. Regardless, there already exists a "scientific" theory of this kind -- it's called psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), and it's one of the fastest growing areas of research today. It's producing many more promising results than the intellectually bankrupt "germ theory" of disease, upon which so much money is wasted every year. I suggest you do a websearch on PNI, and see what you come up with. At any rate, I hope this book will run through a long life and provide inspiration for future research and ideas. It provides the most compelling and persuasive explanation for how on earth "people of the late 20th century could possibly believe anything as manifestly preposterous as the now-preaviling AIDS myths." (John Lauritsen) Sooner or later, people will _wake up_, and realize that AIDS is _not_ caused by promiscuity and two fluids containing a virus. And when they wake up, the first book which will help them sort out the human enigma of the "AIDS" phenomenon will be the "AIDS Cult". I trust it won't be the last