Following in the footsteps of Robert Gallo, let's ignore all the facts and speculate for a minute that the virus called HIV actually does cause AIDS. Is it contagious?

To be called "infectious" or "contagious," a disease must meet criteria similar to Koch's Postulates. For example, Farr's Law says that infectious diseases spread exponentially. In other words, the number of cases of a new epidemic will start small, then explode into the population as rapidly as the microbes can be spread from one person to another. The rise and fall of every epidemic can be plotted on a bell curve, increasing drastically in the early stages and decreasing just as rapidly in the later stages.

While the number of cases of AIDS might conform to a Bell curve (depending on which AIDS definition is in vogue at the time), the incidence of the virus called HIV certainly does not. In fact, the number of HIV Positive people in the United States has held steady at approximately 1,000,000 since testing for HIV antibodies first started in 1984. (Medical science normally interprets this kind of statistical behavior to mean that HIV is an old virus, rather than something appearing on the scene in the last couple of decades.) If HIV were contagious, it would have to be multiplying exponentially, which it is not.

In addition, if HIV were contagious, we would see geographical "clusters" of HIV Positives, as the microbe infected those nearby. However, there is no "cluster" pattern for HIV.

If HIV is not contagious, is AIDS? No, it can't be. The first epidemiological law of viral and microbial diseases holds that men and women must be affected equally, because no virus or microbe can discriminate between genders. In the United States and Europe, more than ninety percent (90%) of AIDS cases are male. Granted, the Centers for Disease Control recently added cervical cancer to the list of AIDS diseases (even though it has nothing to do with immune suppression), so the percentages for women may go up a little in the next year or two.

For either HIV or AIDS to be contagious, Farr's Law and epidemiological law must be ignored the same way Koch's Postulates have been ignored to claim HIV as the cause of AIDS.

If AIDS is not contagious, why are the numbers of AIDS cases going up so dramatically, as we're told they are? Contagion is not the only reason for rapidly rising morbidity and mortality statistics. For example, if you took one hundred unprotected people and lay them in the sun on a beach, as time progressed, more and more would develop the same symptoms: excessive body heat, red skin, maybe some blisters, and perhaps even dehydration. Statistics would show that redheads and others with the fairest skin (the highest "risk group") showed the worst symptoms, while those of African-American descent might tolerate the conditions more easily. But no one would suggest that this Sunburn Syndrome ("SS") was the result of an "infectious" or "contagious" agent. True, there was one cause: the sun. However, the statistics only went up and up as each individual responded to the cause directly rather than passing on their "disease" to anyone else.