Free Republic

Two months ago I wrote about an idea for a place in San Francisco where intravenous drug users could shoot up under the supervision of trained personnel. A lot of people thought it sounded crazy. Well, get ready to hear about it again, because the idea is gaining momentum. On Thursday, an all-day symposium - co-hosted by the city Department of Public Health - will examine the idea of creating safe injection centers where users could bring their drugs, shoot up and leave, without fear of arrest. The idea is to decrease overdoses, keep dirty needles off the street, and...

New Jersey has the fifth highest number of AIDS cases in America, and yesterday became the last state to allow intravenous drug users to get clean needles, hoping it will slow the spread of the deadly virus. Gov. Jon Corzine ended a 13-year stalemate by signing a law to permit six communities to host needle exchange sites, where clean syringes and referrals to drug treatment will be available. The bill includes $10 million for drug treatment and counseling programs. "This is an historic day for public health," Corzine said, calling the law "a potential bridge to hope for addicts." After...

The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis came into existence as a group of signatories of an open letter to the scientific community. The letter (dated June 6, 1991) has been submitted to the editors of Nature, Science, The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine. All have refused to publish it. In 1995 The Group was able to get a letter published in Science. You can also sign the statement below online. To the editor: It is widely believed by the general public that a retrovirus called HIV causes the group diseases called AIDS. Many...

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Promoting condoms has failed to stem the spread of AIDS and may have increased promiscuity, the Roman Catholic Church in South Africa says, sparking criticism from AIDS activists. Cardinal Wilfred Napier said there was simply no evidence that promoting condoms had worked, citing the fact that as a contraceptive, they come with a failure rate which implies they probably do not always stop HIV transmission. "Can you show me one example where condoms have stopped the spread of AIDS?," he said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. "If you look at South Africa, millions have been spent...

<p>There is new hope that slowing the spread of AIDS in Africa, where an estimated 30 million people are dying from the disease, may be as simple as ABC.</p> <p>ABC stands for "Abstinence, Be Faithful, or use Condoms," in that order of emphasis. It is also what public health experts call the program begun in Uganda in 1986, when HIV infections and AIDS began washing over Uganda's citizens like a plague. Many Western experts derided the project when it began, but today it is considered the brightest success story in the course of the pandemic.</p>