Thursday, January 26, 2012
Politics Stacey Campfield on the Origins of AIDS: "It Was One Guy Screwing a Monkey"
Posted by Jonathan Meador on Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 3:20 PM
Ever the historian, Tennessee state Sen. Stacey Campfield dished on a variety of topics with Sirius XM radio host Michelangelo Signorile today, and in the process revealed his belief that AIDS happened because a gay airline pilot had sex with a (gay?) monkey:
Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community — it was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall. My understanding is that it is virtually — not completely, but virtually — impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex...very rarely [transmitted]. What's the average lifespan of a homosexual? it's very short. Google it yourself."
If your brain is reeling from that statement, that's because Campfield's words are such pure-grade bullshit that their gravity becomes infinitely dense, warping space-time to plunge readers 30 years into the past to an era where the lack of information on AIDS fueled a panic that is, unfortunately, alive and well in the state's 7th District Senate office.
Pith has called Campfield's office to see if he has joined the rest of the world in the 21st century in the time since his remarks were made, but we have yet to hear back.
Click here to listen to the entire interview.
Comments (38)
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The Radiolab podcast has an awesome piece about the origins of HIV, well worth a listen for anyone interested in, y'know, truth and stuff.
http://www.radiolab.org/2011/nov/14/
This would be comical if it were not true. Was the guy screwing the monkey really an airline pilot or maybe a gay Mexican wrestling clown. And this guy is a state senator in Tennessee. Knoxville should be very embarrassed.
Campfield must have originated in a similar tryst between a monkey and a football.
I can't tell if I'm going to cry or start violently screaming knowing that this man holds seat in a political office.
I've been fucking monkeys for years and have yet to contract AIDS.
Oh, and all the other sexually transmitted diseases came from gay men screwing monkeys too. He forgot that little tidbit.
If memory serves me correctly , and it does, and with one hand tied behind my back, the first reports of the origins of AIDS was that in Africa a man was bitten by a green monkey, green being a subspecies. Evidently green monkeys are immune to the HIV. There's always the possibility the bite was caused by a lover's spat.
Isn't it illegal in Tennessee for a man to be named Stacey?
Gast,
I suspect that it was from people eating monkeys not monkeys eating people.
As for me, the image of Peter Graves in that cockpit in uniform and saying 'Do you like Gladiator movies Cheeta?' is irresistible.
"Homosexuality "takes 30 years off your life." The average life expectancy for gay men, Bennett declared, was just 43.
Many a mother's heart around the country must have sunk at that moment amid premonitions that she would outlive her son. A well-known public figure would think twice before delivering tidings that grim, right?"
http://igfculturewatch.com/1997/12/18/william-bennett-gays-and-the-truth-mr-virtue-dabbles-in-phony-statistics/
There are millions of people in Africa who would be extremely surprised to hear that it's "virtually impossible" to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex. It's fantastic how many people "successfully" defied the odds. What a provincial jerk. Is he lying or just stupid?
Sorry to let you down but...
Short lifespan of homosexuals
http://theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/22SxSo/PnSx/HSx/hosx_lifspn.htm
Odds of getting AIDS through vaginal sex
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/895/what-are-the-odds-of-getting-aids-from-ordinary-heterosexual-sex
The research on sex with a monkey being the first transmitter of AIDS has not been proven nor firmly dis proven. It is one of about 5 theories I was able to find. No credible source said any one was definitive one way or the other.
Stacey
He sent me the above message. He quotes an article from 1988. I guess he really is dumber than I thought!
Representative,
The concept of an early form of AIDs being spread by a bite from a monkey or from eating monkey flesh is certainly credible. But sex with a monkey is too too bizarre. Unless the pilot was named Faye Ray.
@Mark Rogers: It could be that one reporter was using another reporter for a source, but I remember reading more than once - back in '80s - that the HIV source was a bite from a green monkey. And one of the articles was on scientific research into the source of AIDS. I've never heard another explanation, and evidently the monkeys were immune to the virus, so I'll go with monkeys as the source until somebody comes up with proof of another source.
Gast,
I never disputed the link to monkeys. It was the 'airline pilot having sex with a monkey' that was absurd. Even if the pilot flew for Air France it would not be credible. Sacrebleu!!
This is too funny for even Colbert or The Onion. Stacie, find a girlfriend somewhere you loser. Every time you open your mouth the collective IQ of this state drops.
I think more people should read this book. The data for the "conspiracy theory" of the origin of HIV is pretty overwhelming.
http://www.amazon.com/Emerging-Viruses-Nat…
"My understanding is that it is virtually — not completely, but virtually — impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex...very rarely [transmitted]."
One word, dude...Africa.
I'm not sure Stacey actually read the links he posted. The first (on lifespan) largely focused on the work of long discredited Paul Cameroon, who used such "scientific" methods as looking at obituaries in the Washington Blade (a newspaper with a primarily audience of young gay men) and comparing them to obituaries in newspapers with a more general audience.
The second link is (a) outdated, but (b) more importantly doesn't even come close to saying what he says it does. It basically says that having protected sex with low risk partners is alot safer than having unprotected sex with high risk partners. How he extrapolates that it's "virtually impossibly to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex" from that article I'll never figure out. Though technically he's right in that it's ACTUALLY impossible to contract AIDS from ANY sex because AIDS is a syndrome that can develop after contracting HIV. You contract HIV, you (may) develop AIDS as a later result.
What I'm really saying here is that perhaps Stacey should keep quiet about topics he knows nothing about, or better yet, actually educate himself on the topics, which involves more than posting a link to an article he read the headline of and guessed (incorrectly) what the content of said article was as "proof" of his misconceptions.
Actually after reading the article from 1988 it seems not as horrible as what the congressman is implying. The writer's advice was that odds of transmitting HIV through "normal, heterosexual" sex are lower WHEN USING A CONDOM. He goes on to state that condoms should be used during anal sex too. Unfortunately, congressman, you took and article from the 1980's and misquoted it, which made you sound even more ignorant than you are. I am surprised you are not still calling HIV "GRID".
I recommend that you do some work to improve your "understanding" of HIV and homosexuality before you make confused and uninformed statements in public. You're embarrassing the people whose district you are from. I would know - I'm one of them.
LOL @ both the fake right and the fake left and all of their little slaves. Welcome to 1984. If you don't understand that HIV was created in a lab you need to pull your head out of the sand. Why did smallpox disappear, and then magically 10 years later all these people were dying of HIV? It's kind of like Building 7 - you can call someone a conspiracy theorist for pointing out the facts of what happened, but that doesn't mean they're crazy, it just means you need to make yourself feel less anxious.
"the fake left and all of their little slaves. "
Amen Tommy Jefferson! And LBJ personally did create HIV in a lab because he was planning on injecting it into Republican leaders! Ronald Reagan found out about it while he was governor of California and put a stop to it! Unfortunately, some gay White House employees got infected and that's how it spread! That's the real story of the spread of HIV!!!!!
By the way, are you related to Thomas Jefferson?!?
I think Campfield is positioning himself for the VP spot on the 2012 GOP ticket. Tapping a rising star/firebrand type, with no national experience, but lots of wacky ideas - hey, we've seen it before from that side of the fence...
Had a very Liberal girlfriend for about 4 dates that bit me once.
Immediate HIV test showed everything negative, thankfully!
Of all the things I'm most concerned about here, the fact that Sen. Campfield chooses to get his data from the "The Straight Dope" and "The Road to Emmaus" archives probably ranks at the top of that list.
The Straight Dope is actually a well-researched column. HOWEVER that particular column was written, as has been noted, in Dec, 1988. Twenty three -- that's 23 -- years ago. It was based on what was known *at the time*. Time has marched on and there's been a little more research done since then ...
Of all the ideas floating around here, has anyone asked the pertinent question:
Was the monkey gay?
And one more idea to ponder:
Maybe space aliens infected the human race with HIV.
And maybe the space aliens were gay.
This is why Newt is right about the moon colony.
Wonderfully typical gast logic. He's gonna base his understanding of AIDS from a couple of really good, scientific "articles" he read in the eighties. And since he's "never heard another explanation," he's gonna "go with monkeys as the source until somebody comes up with proof of another source."
I'm sure no credible research has been done since the 80's. None that gast couldn't ignore or dismiss out of hand.
Everyone knows you are full of hockey gast. You have no credibility here.
It's extremely alarming that someone who represents a state is so misinformed. It is his warped mind and lack of actual knowledge that will threaten the youth as well as the Gay community of this state. It's shameful.
Jan., 31, 2012
Stacey,
I suppose all of Knoxville and most of the USA has heard about the Bistro encounter. There may be a way you can come out smelling like a rose, so listen and learn.
How about I give you some real science for you to gain some traction and defend yourself a little better. It is time to get these issues in the open and you can do the world and yourself some good.
Here are the basics on HIV and AIDS:
The Science supports that HIV made the jump into man in Africa and in the region of the Congo. There was a preserved blood sample that proved this from a Congo Man. So, you are right on its origination, but perhaps there are other considerations for how the virus jump into man happened.
The Congo was/is an extremely polluted mining area and for an "endogenous retrovirus" to activate in a monkey, these Congo toxins would have to harm the monkey's immune system to allow the virus to be strongly present in the blood and meat. The Congo also used monkeys for meat and a simple thing like cutting oneself around some sickly and infected monkey meat could make the virus jump into humans with similar depressed immunity. So, two things have to happen from an area with toxic pollution: 1. The Monkey immune system has to be harmed so the virus multiplies and the monkey becomes sick, and 2. The exposed Human immunity effects have to be similar and also harmed by the same polluted environment to allow it to infect the human. There is little doubt that this was the case, and the more likely thing was monkey meat and a cut that transferred HIV into this person. This is also scientifically logical.
What causes the problems in humans, where HIV is termed an "exogenous retrovirus", is oxidative stress that sets off cellular enzyme production to repair the oxidative stress from chemicals, toxic metals, and so on. What happens is a mitochondria's enzyme called "Mn-SOD" swings into high production and this depletes the available Mn-manganese needed to keep up SOD production by the mitochondria. HIV in humans is blocked by cellular availability of Mn-manganese and it halts the reverse transcription of the HIV and it can't multiply and won't spread or transmit to other cells. It is that effect that sets up the transmission for HIV from person to person due to any exchange of body fluids, cuts, splash in eye, needle exchanges, and sex.
Now, we can get into your sexual perversion theme and handle things, perhaps, a little better. Another factor that highly increases the transmission rate for HIV is cocaine use. Cocaine use increases the transmission factor for HIV a hundred times in humans. And where we found this Cocaine abuse in the US was in the Gay Oriented Bath Houses around the country and this was generally the larger cities and their Gay Male populations use of this during sex. The effect of cocaine on the body was to increase the oxidative stress, deplete the free manganese in the cells of the body and open the door for any HIV virus in the body to multiply like wildfire. This is why HIV targeted Gay Males in the US and generally in larger cities, and Yes, sexual contact was the prime pathway.
With the treatment, AZT, one of the methods is blocking the reverse transcription of HIV. But, unpolluted humans had the same ability to block HIV transcription when their free manganese in their cells was not overtaxed by oxidative stress. This occurs from toxic materials in the food chain, like toxic metals and fluoride. So, Virologists, like Peter Duesberg in California, spotted that many sex workers in South Africa had an immunity to infection for long periods of time while being exposed to HIV infected workers there.
So, there is a good deal of truth in your statement on HIV transmission due to Gay Sex issues, but it appears better placed as the transmission method in the US and not the Congo. Persons in the US with high degrees of oxidative stress on the cells would tie up the free manganese in their body and those with that factor exposed to HIV either via sex or splashes in the eyes, or infected needles would catch HIV. One can see the food chain factor as the AZT methods wipe out HIV except for areas of the gut that have these very high levels of cellular oxidation stress that keep the HIV reverse transcription going due to manganese depletion.
In the US, places like the CDC only count the death statistics and the drug companies only use AZT to deal with AIDS. There is some new research aimed at the manganese methods, but they don't appear to be looking too seriously.
I noticed Mike Hamilton seems to be going into the AIDS / Africa business in Nashville, and I bet that will turn into a train wreck worse than his UT Athletic Management inability. imho Hamilton's typical management vapidity will likely kill millions in Africa due to not telling them the important cofactors. African HIV rates are highly determined by high fluoride in the food and water chain of Ethiopia and Kenya. In My Humble Opinion!!
How about some better science and sense from you to see if people can learn to all speak with better accuracy about risk factors for HIV transmission and the environmental factors that enable it. These factors do need to become more publicly discussed, so please lead the way and make Tennessee Progressive and Highly Informed. Then, I bet you can really put the Bistro into a bind and get lots of free meals!
Have a Better Day with speaking the higher truths,
Jim Phelps. Knoxville
