Prometheus 6

Once I considered this a plausible scenario:

Step 1:

Pres. Carter: What are we going to do about all this immorality?
NIH: Well, we have these two things we dreamed up...sexually transmitted, no cure. It ought to scare people into acting moral again.
Pres. Carter: What's the difference between the two?
NIH: One makes you scratch your balls every three-four weeks. Looks even worse than The Heartbreak of Psoriasis. The other makes you sick as shit. Might kill you.
Pres. Carter: Jesus, we don't want to kill anyone over this! Use the scratchy balls stuff and put that other crap away for good.

Step 2:

Pres. Reagan: My Conservative backers want something done about all this immorality. What do we got?
NIH: I don't know...we tried making everyone's balls itch. The only other thing will have has a really strong chance of killing you slowly and painfully.
Pres. Reagan: Hm...it would set an example...lowers the burden on Social Security and keeps them off welfare at the same time...

Do I still consider it plausible? Actually, I just don't consider it. Prevention is the issue at this point.

Quote of note:

"This is not a bunch of crazy people running around saying they're out to get us," Akbar said. The belief "comes from the reality of 300 years of slavery and 100 years of post-slavery exploitation."

Akbar cited the Tuskegee experiment conducted by the federal government between 1932 and 1972. In it, scientists told black men they were being treated for syphilis but actually withheld treatment so they could study the course of the disease.

Today, he said, African Americans are more likely to live in communities near pollution sources, such as freeways and oil refineries, and far from health care centers. "There are a lot of indicators that our lives are not valued," Akbar said.

Study: Many Blacks Cite AIDS Conspiracy
Prevention Efforts Hurt, Activists Say
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 25, 2005; Page A02

More than 20 years after the AIDS epidemic arrived in the United States, a significant proportion of African Americans embrace the theory that government scientists created the disease to control or wipe out their communities, according to a study released today by Rand Corp. and Oregon State University.

That belief markedly hurts efforts to prevent the spread of the disease among black Americans, the study's authors and activists said. African Americans represent 13 percent of the U.S. population, according to Census Bureau figures, yet they account for 50 percent of new HIV infections in the nation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nearly half of the 500 African Americans surveyed said that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is man-made. The study, which was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, appears in the Feb. 1 edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.

More than one-quarter said they believed that AIDS was produced in a government laboratory, and 12 percent believed it was created and spread by the CIA.

A slight majority said they believe that a cure for AIDS is being withheld from the poor. Forty-four percent said people who take the new medicines for HIV are government guinea pigs, and 15 percent said AIDS is a form of genocide against black people.

At the same time, 75 percent said they believe medical and public health agencies are working to stop the spread of AIDS in black communities. But the responses, which varied only slightly by age, gender, education and income level, alarmed the researchers.

"As a researcher knowing that these beliefs were out there, I wasn't as surprised as people I share the study with," said Laura Bogart, a behavioral scientist for the Rand Corp., who co-authored the study with Sheryl Thorburn, associate professor in the College of Health and Human Sciences at Oregon State.

"But the findings are striking, and a wake-up call to the prevention community," Bogart said. "The prevention community has not addressed conspiracy beliefs in the context of prevention. I think that a lot of people involved in prevention may not be from the community where they are trying to prevent HIV."