"A part of the fall of Adam and Eve was the introduction of death and disease to the world-- it was a result of the fall, of man's deliberate choice to disobey God. Had the fall never happened, the perfect world that God created would have continued."
Biblically this is true, but death and disease are not the same thing. Death is a phyiscal state. Diseases such as AIDS, herpes, gonorrhea, syphilis - in fact, all Sexually Transmitted Diseases - are themselves living organisms, separate forms of life.
Arteriosclerosis leading to a heart attack may be a purely organic process traceable to the dietary habits and genetic patterns of an individual, but STDs are something different. As separate, independent, living organisms, they had to be actively created by God, unless we want to say that man's sin caused the independent creation of forms of life that did not previously exist. This would mean that either mankind or the Devil himself, is able to create life out of non-life by the active doing of evil. That evil can give the spark of independent life.
Viruses and bacteria are alive. They are independent living beings, like zebras. By all the Christian theology I've ever studied, only God can create life. Man can't. The Devil can't.
Heart attacks and strokes are conditions caused by chemistry and physics.
But the HIV Virus is an independent living thing that could not have come into existence at all, according to any Christian theology I have ever heard, without the specific creative act of God. Ditto for Cholera and polio. These diseases aren't just conditions of the body. They are predatory animals that eat our bodies and kill us. The Devil cannot create animals. Man and his sins cannot create animals. Only God can do that. Which means that God had to have directly created AIDS, polio and cholera and sicced them on man. They cannot have simply arisen out of nothing, life from non-life, without the divine spark. Not unless we want to start changing around the definitions of life and the sole origin of life as God.
To get away from AIDS having been a specific living creation of God aimed at man by God, we have to allow the Devil to create life out of clay and change the rest of our theology to make the Devil capable of making life. Otherwise, God made AIDS, because AIDS is alive.
I never thought about it that way-- you're right. Thanks for posting this!