Freethought & Rationalism Archive

scigirl · 04-08-2003, 04:06 PM

Bubba,

Ha ha! I've read that argument before.

Here's some interesting factoids about the HIV denyer camp:

http://www.skepticism.net/articles/2001/000046.html

Quote:

But here's the thing I find most odd. When this idea that HIV doesn't cause AIDS was first circulating in the 1980s, the HIV deniers had what they claimed was a massive body of evidence that HIV does not cause AIDS. The evidence? Believe it or not, Africa!

If AIDS is caused by a sexually transmitted virus such as HIV rather than being a reaction to drug abuse, homosexual sex, etc., then why wasn't there an AIDS epidemic in Africa? The fact that there wasn't an AIDS epidemic in Africa proved that AIDS couldn't be caused by HIV.

Hmmm....

Here's some refutations of the Duensberg claims:
http://www.med.sc.edu:85/lecture/appendix_2.htm

Claims are in italics, refuations in regular type.

Quote:

The following are the arguments raised by those who believe that HIV does not cause AIDS:

i) HIV is not in semen.
It is actually found to a high degree in most investigations.

ii) Viruses work exponentially to produce new virions and disease.
This statement confuses virus in a cell, where this is true, with disease in individual. There are numerous examples of slow progressive viral diseases.

iii) Viruses do not cause disease when neutralizing antibody is present.
This is not true. There are examples of diseases which progress in spite of the presence of antibody.

iv) Fewer than 1 in 10,000 T4 cells infected.
The number is lower than originally stated but this is a problem.

v) Few hemophiliacs get AIDS. They die of immune suppression by therapeutic blood proteins.
HIV positive hemophiliacs get immune suppression but HIV negative ones do not.

vi) Transfusion of HIV contaminated blood not been shown to give AIDS.
In a Mexican study of 39 patients given HIV+ blood, AIDS occurred in 3% of the recipients within 12 months, 50% after 29 months, 75% after 36 months, 100% after 48 months. The mean survival time after AIDS onset was 9 months.

i) HIV does not fulfill Koch's postulates.

Postulate 1: An infectious agent occurs in each case of a disease in sufficient amounts to cause pathology.
It is said that there are many cases of AIDS without HIV, although it is to be expected that there would be other causes of immune suppression. There is the problem of the majority of uninfected T4 cells.

Postulate 2: A specific infectious agent is not found in other diseases.
This was later abandoned by Koch when it was found that one agent can cause more than one specific disease.

Postulate 3: After isolation and culture, the infectious agent can induce the disease in another individual.
In the case of HIV which only causes disease in humans, this is difficult to do as there is naturally a lack of volunteers. In the case of SIV, cloned virus does induce disease in healthy monkeys. This has now, in fact, been done with HIV as the result of the accidental infection of laboratory workers with cloned HIV.

With regard to Koch's postulates, Duesberg has argued that the following criteria must be met to show that HIV causes AIDS

1. The microorganism must be found in all cases of the disease.
2. It must be isolated from the host and grown in pure culture.
3. It must reproduce the original disease when introduced into a susceptible host.
4. It must be found in the experimental host so infected.

It is now apparent that:

1. Virtually all AIDS patients are HIV-infected
2. HIV can be isolated from virtually all AIDS patients, as well as in almost all seropositive individuals
with both early- and late-stage disease
3. Health care and laboratory workers accidentally infected with concentrated purified HIV have developed AIDS
4. HIV has been isolated from many of these individuals

See: KOCH'S POSTULATES FULFILLED

It should also be noted that:
1. HIV has always preceded AIDS in a population.
2. HIV is the single common factor between AIDS sufferers who are gay San Franciscans, African female heterosexuals, hemophiliacs, children, intravenous drug users.
3. Within any risk group virtually only the HIV+ individuals get AIDS. It could be argued that all members of these groups are subject to immunosuppression but this is not the case with wives of hemophiliacs?
4. There is a better correlation between HIV and AIDS than between cigarettes and lung cancer.

Summary of the abundant evidence that HIV is the causative agent of AIDS:

1. Before the appearance of HIV, AIDS-like syndromes were rare, today they are common in HIV infected people

2. AIDS and HIV are invariably linked in time, place and population group

3. The main risk factors for AIDS are sexual contact, transfusions, IV drugs, hemophilia. These have existed for years but only after the appearance of HIV, has AIDS been observed in these populations

4. Infection by HIV is the ONLY factor that predicts that a person will develop AIDS

5. Numerous serosurveys show that AIDS is common in populations with anti-HIV antibodies but is rare in populations with a low seroprevalence of anti-HIV antibodies

6. Cohort studies show that severe immunosuppression and AIDS-defining illnesses occur exclusively in individuals that are HIV-infected

7. Persistently low CD4 counts are extraordinarily rare in the absence of HIV or another known cause of immunosuppression

8. Nearly everyone with AIDS has anti-HIV antibodies

9. HIV can be detected in nearly everyone with AIDS

10. HIV does fulfil Koch's postulates

11. New born infants with no behavioral risks develop AIDS if HIV infected

12. An HIV-infected twin will develop AIDS, while the uninfected twin does not

13. Since the appearance of HIV, mortality has increased dramatically among hemophiliacs

14. Studies of transfusion-acquired AIDS has repeatedly led to discovery of HIV in recipient as well as donor

15. Sex partners of HIV-infected hemophiliacs and transfusion patients acquire the virus and AIDS without other risk factors

16. HIV infects and kills CD4+ T cells in vitro and in vivo

17. HIV damages CD4 precursor cells

18. Body viral (HIV) load correlates with progression to AIDS

19. HIV is similar in its genome and morphology to other lentiviruses that often cause immunodeficiency, slow wasting disorders, neurodegeneration and death

20. Baboons develop AIDS after inoculation with HIV-2 that also causes AIDS in humans

21. Asian monkeys develop AIDS after inoculation with simian immunodeficiency virus

Clearly, the correlations between HIV and AIDS are very striking indeed.

scigirl

Bubba · 04-08-2003, 04:34 PM

Scigirl...I think the evidence is overwhelming that HIV does cause AIDS. It's idiots like Phil Johnson who deny it that caused me to question my faith in the first place. Seing how nasty HIV/AIDS really is call into question both intelligent design and an intelligent designer in my honest opinion. Which is why I'm not sure I could call myself a Christian/thiest any more.

By the way, welcome back to II...I've missed your posts.

Bubba

scigirl · 04-08-2003, 04:36 PM

Ok one more than I'll stop (embryology is calling my name).

I found a great site that goes into a lot of detail about both the science and the history of the AIDS skeptics. I think it was great for scientists to be skeptical of the hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS in the 1980's - when we didn't know that much about the theory. Duesberg in 1980 was very skeptical of the hypothesis. Why is he still skeptical? Well it could be that there is a massive government conspiracy, or it could be, it just could be. . . he doesn't want to admit he was wrong and likes the attention.

Here's the site:
http://www.skeptic.com/03.2.harris-aids.html

Here's some highlights:

Quote:

Hypotheses may be disproved by the right data with relative ease, and cases of HIV-free AIDS would disprove the idea that HIV causes AIDS, in proportion to how often these are found (i.e., if 10% of AIDS cases were HIV-free, this would prove that HIV is not the cause of at least 10% of AIDS). Thus, Duesberg and Root-Bernstein are not the only ones who have been looking for HIV-free people who are badly CD4+ lymphocyte immunosuppressed without reason (i.e., good candidates for HIV-free AIDS). Very recently the C.D.C. reported that after a massive search it had only been able to find less than 100 people without HIV infection across the country whose CD4+ counts were at one time less than 300 (not quite in the AIDS-class immunosuppression range of 200, but drawing close). This syndrome was named "ICL" (idiopathic CD4+ lymphocytopenia), meaning "people with low CD4+ lymphocyte counts without a medically-defined disease."

So there IS some people who have HIV-free AIDS. But before you prepare to join the denyer camp, read on...

Quote:

Why was ICL not simply called "HIV-free AIDS?" Critics have darkly suggested that the reason is politics, but in fact there were problems with considering these people as AIDS cases which had nothing to do with AIDS politics or the HIV theory. One difficulty was that people labeled as having "ICL" were found not to come from the AIDS risk groups. They did not use illicit drugs, had not been exposed to blood products, and had no evidence of sexual behavior which would have exposed them to a special infection risk. Thus, as we will see, the most popular alternative AIDS hypotheses did not explain these people either--a fact which did not keep them from being mentioned in nearly every skeptical treatment of the HIV/AIDS issue. What the skeptics had forgotten (or hoped their readers would not notice) was that the immune deficiency of people with ICL did not seem to be acquired.10 What justification was there, then, for calling it AIDS?

Moreover, people with ICL were not only epidemiologically, but often immunologically distinguishable from AIDS cases: their CD4+ lymphocyte counts swung widely, and transiently, in response to infections, and were often much higher than 300 (in contrast to people with AIDS, whose CD4+ lymphocyte counts tend to stay low and heading on an ever-downward trend). ICL people also often had low total lymphocytes or low CD8+ lymphocyte counts, again indicating that their immune failure did not make much distinction between CD4+ and CD8+ lymphocytes, as classic AIDS does. Clearly, these people did not belong to the classic AIDS groups which began suffering with epidemic immune problems about 1980. They are not part of the new phenomenon of AIDS, and although sometimes suffering from opportunistic infections, did not even seem to share the implacable death rate of AIDS.10

So let me summarize: The HIV-causes-AIDS denyers DO NOT DENY THAT AIDS EXISTS - in other words, they believe that there is an acquired immune deficiency, but the thing that is acquired is not in fact HIV, but something else. Duesberg thinks the something else is drug exposure.

But - the small population of people who (sort of) have "AIDS" without HIV - don't actually have an acquired deficiency at all! They have no known identical risk factors - and they certainly don't have the risk factors that Duesberg and his friends claim cause AIDS. So they don't fit either group's definitions - ergo, they are excluded.

Secondly, this population of people do differ from AIDS patients even with the clinical criteria - the CD4 levels, the CD8 levels, and the specific types of infections don't fit the definition of AIDS.

So, scientists continued to search for HIV negative AIDS patients. Here's that data:

Quote:

Searches for HIV-negative people who have AIDS-type severe immune suppression have also been taken specifically within AIDS risk groups. Vermund reported in the United States Multicenter Cohort Study that of the 2,713 persistently HIV- negative homosexual men in the study, who had had a total of 22,643 blood tests, only one significantly immunosuppressed man (CD4+ lymphocyte counts persistently less than 300) was found. This man was taking chemotherapy and radiation for cancer, and thus had a very good reason other than his lifestyle to explain his lab results.11 If this study is indicative, then most, if not all, male homosexuals with sustained AIDS-range immune failure are HIV-positive, since it has proved very difficult to find any who are HIV- negative.

Much the same seems to be true in IV drug users: in a study of 1,246 HIV-negative injecting drug users in New York City from 1984 to 1992, for example, only four were found with CD4+ lymphocyte counts less than 300 (if IV drug use per se was a major cause of AIDS, the number should have been far higher). In this small group of four people, even though infected with multiple non-HIV viruses, and with a history of heavy drug use, immune function was stable and without the steady decline in CD4+ lymphocyte counts over a time span of years which is characteristic of all unselected HIV-positive cohorts.12 Thus, in this study also, the few HIV-negative people who could be found with even near-AIDS range immunodepression, were still not behaving medically like people with AIDS

So much for Duesberg's hypothesis that drugs or gayness cause AIDS.

Wow guys - you'll have to check out this Root-Bernstein guy - what a weirdo:

Quote:

Unfortunately, Root-Bernstein is willing to let lifestyle and habit differences explain epidemiologic differences when it suits his argument's needs, but much less willing to consider them when they don't. An illustrative example occurs as Root-Bernstein discusses the rectal traumas and infections which occur during certain male homosexual practices, writing of these (p. 283-4): "It is now accepted that such injuries and infections greatly increase the risk of concurrent infections (HIV or otherwise) and of semen gaining access to the immune system following anal intercourse."

Yet when Root-Bernstein discusses the statistical association of AIDS with receptive anal intercourse (p.225) he shows an odd difficulty with the same concept: "One possibility is that it is much easier to transmit HIV to a receptive partner than from a receptive partner. No other sexually transmitted disease behaves this way, however . . . . HIV would be the first disease agent to be able to make the discrimination, unless some other factor is involved."

Here, unfortunately, Root-Bernstein is wrong, and wrong for the very reasons that he himself discusses in the quote preceding the last.

Ok off to study embryo...

God Fearing Atheist · 04-08-2003, 05:07 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Bubba
Scigirl...I think the evidence is overwhelming that HIV does cause AIDS. It's idiots like Phil Johnson who deny it that caused me to question my faith in the first place. Seing how nasty HIV/AIDS really is call into question both intelligent design and an intelligent designer in my honest opinion. Which is why I'm not sure I could call myself a Christian/thiest any more.

By the way, welcome back to II...I've missed your posts.

Bubba

An idiot?!

Johnson is associated with the most prestigious ensemble of researchers the world has ever known; the Discovery Institute!

And i'll be goddamned if isnt tron. I still remember our contractarian debate from like, two years ago.

scigirl · 04-08-2003, 10:18 PM

Hey Bubba,

It's good to be back - even if it's temporary (stupid school!)

Quote:

Seing how nasty HIV/AIDS really is call into question both intelligent design and an intelligent designer in my honest opinion. Which is why I'm not sure I could call myself a Christian/thiest any more.

Heh, for you it was AIDS. For me it was Native Americans. I wondered - if you needed Jesus to get into heaven, than why didn't he send Jesus to them? Then I thought, maybe He did, and more than one religion is right, then I thought, ahh the whole premise is screwy...

scigirl

Secular Pinoy · 04-09-2003, 03:07 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by scigirl
For me it was Native Americans. I wondered - if you needed Jesus to get into heaven, than why didn't he send Jesus to them? [/B]

WB scigirl! Jesus did come to the new world and preached to the Native Americans. At least, that's what I think Mormons believe in (not a mormon so I'm not certain).

RoddyM · 04-09-2003, 09:27 AM

It's very often said that an HIV denialist or dubialist has to believe in a vast conspiracy. Not so. HIV/AIDS is no more a conspiracy than Christmas. It's appealing, people like it whether they "believe" it or not and go along with it. Workers at Hallmark greeting cards do not have to swear an oath of secrecy. Neither do doctors or technicians at path labs.

If HIV is a misnomer or a wimp then Duesberg would be just as correct now as in 1984. He was there in 1984. It makes to sense to apologize for what Duesberg believed then and say that he only maintains his stance for the sake of it now.

People say that "AIDS victims" lived longer once drug therapies became available than they did in the early '80's before drugs. In the early '80's the people who were diagnosed with AIDS were people who came to the attention of doctors because they were sick. Once the antibody tests became available a higher proportion of healthy people were being treated with drugs. It figures that it takes longer to poison a healthy person to death than a sick person.

Later still it is claimed that studies were done to demonstrate that HAART extended the lives of patients selected not for their state of health or duration of infection but on whether they did or did not receive therapy. These studies are very dubious even if you believe HIV/AIDS. They are funded by drug companies. They are halted if they begin to show unwanted results. Maybe toxic treatments provide a placebo effect for some people. Maybe the subjects getting treatment get more positive attention, more meals, have more supportive family etc. Maybe the subjects who don't receive treatment figure they are dead anyway, spend less time in the medical setting and more time doing what made them sick in the first place, spend more time alone. Anyway, studies like this are bunk if there is no such thing as HIV.

There are people who have had access to centrifuges and electron microscopes every day of their lives for the past twenty years who maintain that HIV has not been isolated in any meaningful way and can not be isolated in an individual that is diagnosed HIV +ve...say... next week.

Dr. Rick mentioned specificity and low risk populations, mind bending stuff. Is the specificity of a test a property of the test, the population, the result or a property of the individual? It spins my head. Generally it's agreed that a positive test result is less reliable in a low prevalence population. Yet you seemed to be saying the opposite. You seem to be assuming that a blood donor who tests positive is more likely to be a true positive because the other 9999 donors that year all tested negative. Maybe I've misread your post.

People ask then, if it's not HIV what is it? It's a sad fact that in this city, like any other large city, there are a lot of very sick people getting around. Some are homeless, some are malnourished, some use alcohol or drugs in preference to food and shelter. Some are homosexuals and prostitutes. Some have got rotten teeth, bad skin, some kind of chronic infection or frequently getting infections. Some spend a lot of time in hospitals, others wouldn't go near them. Many are physically scarred, have track marks and have spent time locked up in gaols or psych hospitals. These are the people no-one wants their sons or daughters to become. These are the people whose blood was tested and retested until a test could be manufactured that showed these people had something in common, a protein, an "anti-body" that would reasonably consistently light up a test apparatus. It's like horse racing system software. You run formulas by trial and error on a spreadsheet of racing results until you find a system that would have worked. The trouble is that it doesn't work in the future.

In 1984 I had no reason to doubt that a virus had been found that attacks the immune system until such time that the person dies from what would normally have been a treatable illness. But since then there has been too much bullshit and willful ignorance. Too many excuses and inconsistencies. No vaccine. No routine isolation or demonstration that HIV is necessary and sufficient to cause illness. Too much political and moral grandstanding.

ps418 · 04-09-2003, 11:55 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by RoddyM
Later still it is claimed that studies were done to demonstrate that HAART extended the lives of patients selected not for their state of health or duration of infection but on whether they did or did not receive therapy. These studies are very dubious even if you believe HIV/AIDS. They are funded by drug companies. They are halted if they begin to show unwanted results. Maybe toxic treatments provide a placebo effect for some people. Maybe the subjects getting treatment get more positive attention, more meals, have more supportive family etc. Maybe the subjects who don't receive treatment figure they are dead anyway, spend less time in the medical setting and more time doing what made them sick in the first place, spend more time alone. Anyway, studies like this are bunk if there is no such thing as HIV.

This is a nice example of the irrational excuses bullshit-peddlers revert to when the evidence is against them. First, who funded any particular study is irrelevant -- what matters is the science itself, which you haven't even begun to refute. Second, there is no evidence that in general HAART studies are stopped when they begin to show 'unwanted' results (unless you mean drug trials that were stopped due to high incidence of adverse reactions, which is demanded by law). Third, there is no reason to suppose that placebo effects alone could account for the highly significant odds ratios consistently found in HAART cohort studies. If placebo effects were responsible, you'd expect the same ORs for placebos and HAART, which is not what is found. For instance, an early double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of Zidovudine showed a 1/7 ratio of opportunistic infection between placebo and experiment group, and while there was a gain of 8.9 CD4 cells per cubic millimeter per month in the Zidovudine group, the placebo group showed a loss of 12.0 CD4 cells per cubic millimeter per month (Kinloch-de Lo�s et al, 1995). Fourth, there is no reason at all to suppose that the treatment groups in these studies were biased in terms of familial support, etc., (since subject selection is on the basis of CD4 count or HIV+, and group assignment is random) or that familial support, etc., could produce the highly signficant odds ratios found in HAART studies. Bottom line, there is no doubt that HAART slows time to AIDS/time to death in those infected with HIV, and this is strong evidence that HIV plays a causal role in AIDS.

Patrick

Kinloch-de Lo�s et al, 1995. A Controlled Trial of Zidovudine in Primary Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection. New England Journa of Medicine 333:408-413.

Godless Dave · 04-09-2003, 12:58 PM

This just in: mosquito bites do not cause itching. People were itching anyway, and the government needed to come up with an explanation to keep them happy. All the research was funded by pesticide companies.

Dr Rick · 04-09-2003, 01:14 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by RoddyM
Dr. Rick mentioned specificity and low risk populations, mind bending stuff. Is the specificity of a test a property of the test, the population, the result or a property of the individual? It spins my head. Generally it's agreed that a positive test result is less reliable in a low prevalence population. Yet you seemed to be saying the opposite. You seem to be assuming that a blood donor who tests positive is more likely to be a true positive because the other 9999 donors that year all tested negative. Maybe I've misread your post.

The sensitivity and specificity of any medical test varies with the pre-test probabilities of the condition under study existing within the test-population, but the qualities of the test are an important factor, too. The predictive values (and the proportion of positive and negative evaluations that can be expected) depend upon the prevalence of a disease within a population. For given values of sensitivity and specificity, a patient with a positive test is more likely to truly have the disease if the patient belongs to a population with a high prevalence of the disease. The predictive values with HIV EIA in combination with the Western blot are extrodinarily high even in low-risk populations, because, even in this group, the specificity and sensitivity of these tests is high (much greater than 99% for the former). Of course, a positive test obtained from a member of a high-risk population has even greater specificity.

Quote:

...there has been too much bullshit and willful ignorance. Too many excuses and inconsistencies. No vaccine. No routine isolation or demonstration that HIV is necessary and sufficient to cause illness.

You really should read some of the posts and the links that have been provided on this thread.

Rick

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04-08-2003, 04:34 PM	#52
Bubba Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Orient, OH USA Posts: 1,501	Scigirl...I think the evidence is overwhelming that HIV does cause AIDS. It's idiots like Phil Johnson who deny it that caused me to question my faith in the first place. Seing how nasty HIV/AIDS really is call into question both intelligent design and an intelligent designer in my honest opinion. Which is why I'm not sure I could call myself a Christian/thiest any more. By the way, welcome back to II...I've missed your posts. Bubba

04-09-2003, 09:27 AM	#57
RoddyM Regular Member Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 183	It's very often said that an HIV denialist or dubialist has to believe in a vast conspiracy. Not so. HIV/AIDS is no more a conspiracy than Christmas. It's appealing, people like it whether they "believe" it or not and go along with it. Workers at Hallmark greeting cards do not have to swear an oath of secrecy. Neither do doctors or technicians at path labs. If HIV is a misnomer or a wimp then Duesberg would be just as correct now as in 1984. He was there in 1984. It makes to sense to apologize for what Duesberg believed then and say that he only maintains his stance for the sake of it now. People say that "AIDS victims" lived longer once drug therapies became available than they did in the early '80's before drugs. In the early '80's the people who were diagnosed with AIDS were people who came to the attention of doctors because they were sick. Once the antibody tests became available a higher proportion of healthy people were being treated with drugs. It figures that it takes longer to poison a healthy person to death than a sick person. Later still it is claimed that studies were done to demonstrate that HAART extended the lives of patients selected not for their state of health or duration of infection but on whether they did or did not receive therapy. These studies are very dubious even if you believe HIV/AIDS. They are funded by drug companies. They are halted if they begin to show unwanted results. Maybe toxic treatments provide a placebo effect for some people. Maybe the subjects getting treatment get more positive attention, more meals, have more supportive family etc. Maybe the subjects who don't receive treatment figure they are dead anyway, spend less time in the medical setting and more time doing what made them sick in the first place, spend more time alone. Anyway, studies like this are bunk if there is no such thing as HIV. There are people who have had access to centrifuges and electron microscopes every day of their lives for the past twenty years who maintain that HIV has not been isolated in any meaningful way and can not be isolated in an individual that is diagnosed HIV +ve...say... next week. Dr. Rick mentioned specificity and low risk populations, mind bending stuff. Is the specificity of a test a property of the test, the population, the result or a property of the individual? It spins my head. Generally it's agreed that a positive test result is less reliable in a low prevalence population. Yet you seemed to be saying the opposite. You seem to be assuming that a blood donor who tests positive is more likely to be a true positive because the other 9999 donors that year all tested negative. Maybe I've misread your post. People ask then, if it's not HIV what is it? It's a sad fact that in this city, like any other large city, there are a lot of very sick people getting around. Some are homeless, some are malnourished, some use alcohol or drugs in preference to food and shelter. Some are homosexuals and prostitutes. Some have got rotten teeth, bad skin, some kind of chronic infection or frequently getting infections. Some spend a lot of time in hospitals, others wouldn't go near them. Many are physically scarred, have track marks and have spent time locked up in gaols or psych hospitals. These are the people no-one wants their sons or daughters to become. These are the people whose blood was tested and retested until a test could be manufactured that showed these people had something in common, a protein, an "anti-body" that would reasonably consistently light up a test apparatus. It's like horse racing system software. You run formulas by trial and error on a spreadsheet of racing results until you find a system that would have worked. The trouble is that it doesn't work in the future. In 1984 I had no reason to doubt that a virus had been found that attacks the immune system until such time that the person dies from what would normally have been a treatable illness. But since then there has been too much bullshit and willful ignorance. Too many excuses and inconsistencies. No vaccine. No routine isolation or demonstration that HIV is necessary and sufficient to cause illness. Too much political and moral grandstanding.

04-09-2003, 12:58 PM	#59
Godless Dave Contributor Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: With 10,000 lakes who needs a coast? Posts: 10,762	This just in: mosquito bites do not cause itching. People were itching anyway, and the government needed to come up with an explanation to keep them happy. All the research was funded by pesticide companies.

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