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Reader comment on item: A Conspiracy Theory Spreads Polio

Submitted by Peter J. Herz (Taiwan), May 24, 2005 at 19:59

Years ago. the Communist Bloc planted the story that AIDS was brewed up by the US Army's medical research labs at Fort Detrick in Maryland in order to kill off the non-white population of the world. It is still widely believed--and nobody asks why, if it were true, the USA has a substantial "non-white" population, including a good many citizens of Frederick, Maryland, where Fort Detrick is located, some of whom even work at the fort!

To Mr. Johanson, I (neither Catholic, Muslim, nor "third-worlder", too) can only note that mistakes and follies are no-one's monopolies or dyopolies. The number of class action suits that have arisen due to the US government's experiments with radiation back in the late 1940's and '50's, at a time when a confident secularism had just taken its place as the dominant culture in the USA, show that the scientific mind can do the wrong thing, too. Ever since Adam fell, we've been subject to the miseries of this life, death itself, and even the pains of Hell forever--which means that if something can go wrong, it will.

Hence, I take conspiracy theorizing as evidence of a belief in the basic goodness of man under siege--a common denominator of decayed enlightenment thinking, the Armino-Pelagian theology that passes for Evangelicalism, and Islam.

And, if the biological follies mentioned by Dr. Bales grow and grow across the Muslim world, well, I can only say that I believe that Messiah's name is Jesus Christ, not Uncle Sam or WHO.
It's better to let conspiracy theory-mongering authorities, whether governmental or religious, face a population that starts to ask "why" rather than throw aid workers into the path of danger.

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