Re: Swine flu-HIV could devastate human race

[Guest guest]

If that happens, it is squarely on the shoulders of those who have caused HIV/AIDS to be considered a political issue rather than a health issue. For decades we have been giving people drugs to suppress their symptoms and leaving them out on the street where they keep fooling around. I know for a fact that there are HIV positive men in this area who are sexually active. Those are just the ones that publicly say they have it. Not telling how many more do but aren't saying.

Yes indeed if HIV combines with Swine Flu or any other airborne virus, it would be utterly devastating because the human body can not make itself immune to the HIV virus. Of course the question is if the HIV portion would remain active and behave and the pure form does. I know it has combined with tuberculosis, but I don't know if HIV remains fully active or if some of the DNA is simply there.

I fear what is happening is that our technology is sowing the seeds of our annihilation. By that I mean we have successfully created several know drug resistant bacteria that are very deadly and spreading into the general population. If they become commonplace, we will have lost the advantage of most of a century of medical advancement because we will be back to square one against communicable diseases. Actually maybe further back than that because most of these germs are highly lethal. If HIV becomes airborne, we've pretty well had it and it will be because of our medical/political intervention.

What will be so bad about it is that if society stutters or backslides, any knowledge or hope we might have to find new treatments could be lost. We could rediscover penicillin maybe, but it would be useless. Simply, imagine 18th century medical knowledge trying to fight a new plague that resists what would be seen as magical cures, meaning the most advanced antibiotics currently known. We couldn't do it. Humanity might well devolve into isolated enclaves which steadily grow more primitive as trade and communications die off.

In a message dated 5/4/2009 4:54:45 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, no_reply writes:

The four strands of the swine flu virus come from pigs, humans and birds. Experts believe that the virus mutated into its current form in the bodies of pigs. Health authorities are particularly worried that the capability to mutate already exhibited by the virus could eventually let it combine with the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS. That could cause a lethally dangerous global health problem on a comparable scale to the 1918 Spanish influenza epidemic that eventually infected more than 500 million people -- more than one-quarter of the human race -- and killed 10 percent of them. That death toll of 50 million was more than five times the total fatalities of World War I. The epidemic killed more Americans than died in World War I and World II combined. 2009 3 Free CREDIT SCORES: See Your 3 Credit Scores from All 3 Bureaus FREE!