The other day Sy Hersh published a brilliant piece in the New Yorker that has had more powerful reverberations than one might have imagined. I refer to the fact that independent of whether what Mr. Hersh reported was accurate to its tiniest detail, it nonetheless has had the extremely important, preemptive effect of effectively taking the "nightmare of the nuclear option" off the table.
Five years ago, I wrote the following after waking in a cold sweat. The recent mainstream interest in the HIV/AIDS controversy, so courageously exposed in the March issue of Harper's, combined with the Hersh expos, caused me to remember it now.
If I may be so bold as to suggest that there is a parallel between the two "nightmares."
The Ultimate AIDS Nightmare
I wake up one morning and click my browser or turn on the TV to discover that the vaccine is ready, and plans are underway for the largest public health project in the recorded history of the planet. “Thanks to the ceaseless, selfless and near heroic efforts of (mostly US) government, academic and company scientists, the beginning of the 21st century will see the end of AIDS. No expense will be spared, and no corner of the globe will go unprotected.
This vast effort will take place in three phases. In the first phase, everyone will be tested in order to determine who is eligible for the vaccine. In the second, all persons who are antibody positive, and therefore ineligible, will immediately, and on a compassionate basis if needed, be provided the newest and most potent medicines to prolong and enrich the quality of their lives for as long as possible. In the third phase, actual vaccination of all antibody negatives will commence. Everyone who receives the vaccine will be tested to make certain that he or she has become antibody positive, and will be regularly retested, and given booster vaccinations when required. The program will begin almost immediately in all US hospitals with the testing and vaccination of every newborn child.
Since most antibody positives will be found in Africa, it is imperative that an unparalleled humanitarian effort be undertaken to ensure that the expensive pharmaceuticals that will be required are made available through the largesse and compassion of the industrialized countries, which will now repay the dark continent for hundreds of years of mistreatment by saving it from AIDS, even though the scourge came from there in the first place.
The heads of state of the G-7 nations have already met and pledged “whatever it takes” to meet the WHO deadline of December 31, 2002 (symbolically the final day of the first palindrome year of the millennium) as “Everybody is Positive Day."
Like all nocturnal neural performances, this particular totalitarian insanity (the same thing) has tendrils, if not roots, in waking so-called reality. Since natural vaccination is well known to be completely effective as measured by the lifelong presence of high levels of virus-neutralizing antibody in persons with positive AIDS tests, there is no scientific reason why any of the various vaccine preparations in trials that have been demonstrated to induce similar neutralizing antibodies could not tomorrow be declared the winner.
Even paranoiacs can have enemies, and any of three things could catalyze the subtle shift from the world we imagine we inhabit to the one of this Orwellian fantasy that in another order nightmare might turn out to be the same place. One. The heretics show signs of making serious trouble for the church. Two. The gravy train begins to decelerate with a steep slope. Three. The consolidation of medical science allows the various patents and other pies to be divided so as not to leave any of the deserving without a comfortable stash of whatever their heart’s desire.
April 13, 2006
