[Refers to justifiably immoderate post provoked by spam for soccer bets site posted above, now deleted - Ed.]

Well pointed out, Darin. Sometimes one forgets that the entire literature in AIDS and all its research has pretty much got a free pass for twenty years, through dodging of this kind. Everyone is “too busy saving lives” to worry about whether what they are doing makes sense, even if it kills.

Alas, the assembled structure of frequently absurd rationalizations which has resulted is fully protected from the gaze of the believer such as Cohen by a certain property of the human brain which recent neuroscience has thrown much light on, about which we intend to post soon.

That is, the natural tendency of the left brain hemisphere to protect any belief which it has adopted from conflicting data input by flipping the data as it comes into the brain, rather than adapting the belief.

So according to this research with brain damaged patients Cohen is merely exhibiting the common behavior of the bulk of humanity, who are not inclined to think very hard if they can help it. He is entirely unaware of the trick his own brain is playing on him.

Ummm…YES! This is the usual “shoot first; ask questions later” mindset of HIV/AIDS, both in terms of publication of scientific “advances” as well as pharmaceutical distribution. The “imminent” and “urgent” threat of HIV has always been used as an excuse to dodge the traditional avenues of peer review, open discussion of new research findings, and administration of new medical therapies.

The ultimate paradox of Cohen/Sullivan’s idea is that if taken to its logical conclusion, it would require literally *everyone* in the world to go on the drugs. After all, doesn’t Cohen explicitly compare this prophylaxis to an HIV vaccine? Presumably, he would expect everyone to go on a vaccine, if he felt it were developed (no matter how paradoxical that idea is to begin with). So, why does he seem to promote this new drug prophylaxis only to “those at high risk” (read: gays, blacks, Africans)? If it really works, why not give it to everyone?

Of course, Cohen can’t do this. The general population is not going to buy into the idea of every citizen and human being of the world being pumped full of ARVs for the rest of their lives. But this forces Cohen into another corner. By promoting that the drugs should only be given as prophylaxis to “those at high risk”, he is basically acknowledging the fact that HIV is *not* a threat to “everyone”, that the virus *does* discriminate along cultural and behavioural fault lines.

It’s amazing to think what kind of mental contortions Cohen must be going through to balance all the internal contradictions and paradoxes he holds in his mind.