The Plague Has Come At Last

The Plague Has Come At Last

This is the best brief article I have found dealing with the subject of AIDS. There is no copyright, so please distribute it widely.

The author, Gary North, ph.D., is president of the Institute for Christian Economics. He has written a number of books including UNCONDITONAL SURRENDER: GOD’S PROGRAM FOR VICTORY… BACKWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS… DOMINION AND COMMON GRACE… and UNHOLY SPIRITS – OCCULTISM AND NEW AGE HUMANISM. His organization publishes several newsletters including BIBLICAL ECONOMICS TODAY, CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION, DOMINION STRATEGIES, and COVENANT RENEWAL.

For more information, write ICE, Box 8000, Tyler, TX 75711.

The Plague Has Come at Last by Gary North “Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.” -Albert Camus, THE PLAGUE (1948) The time has come to fish or cut bait. Because of my concern for

reprisals, I have kept my mouth shut, or at least I have whispered, for too long. I even turned down a national radio show interview last month on the topic. But something happened to me a week ago that has changed my attitude. I am not remaining quiet any longer.

On the final weekend of February, I attended a conference. Because of restrictions imposed by the organization, I am not allowed to mention its name. This was a rule established in 1981, at the first meeting. It’s not a secret society; it’s more of a publicityshy group. The major “New Right” leaders in the U.S. belong, and a lot of them were in attendance this time.

There is no question what became the focus of attention: a special briefing on AIDS. I don’t think most of the attendees really knew what AIDS is all about when they walked in. They were stunned when they walked out. So was I, and I had heard most of it before. But not all of it.

I can mention who one of the speakers was, since he has agreed: Gene Antonio. Gene wrote THE AIDS COVERUP? (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), by far the best researched and most frightening book on the topic. Subscribers to FIRESTORM CHATS have already heard some of the information Antonio has. Another speaker was a U.S. Congressman.

Because of what I learned at that session, and because of two other public developments that happened that weekend, I am going to put my reputation on the line and “come out of the closet” myself–the “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” closet that the homosexual community has put us in. I am going to lose some subscribers over this. I am also pulling the copyright. I want this issue reprinted.

A generation ago, French existentialist philosopher Albert Camus (caMOO) wrote a grim novel, THE PLAGUE. The plot centered around a town in which a plague had broken out. Would public health officials and politicians admit it in time for people to flee, but in doing so admit defeat for the public health program, or would they simply sit quietly and let the plague take its course? They did the latter for far too long. Safety first. For the bureaucrats.

That same decision now faces us again. Only we are not talking about a town this time. We are talking about the whole world. There will be few places for people to flee to.

WILL THE PLAGUE BECOME OFFICIAL IN TIME?

. . . . . small official notices had been put up about the town, though in places where they would not attract much attention. It was hard to find in these notices any indication that the authorities were facing the situation squarely. The measures enjoined were far from Draconian and one had the feeling that many concessions had been made to a desire not to alarm the public.

So wrote Camus in 1948. So writes North in 1987. But the plague I’m writing about isn’t fiction. It’s real. It’s here.

On Sunday morning, March 1, a local radio station in the Miami area broadcast a most remarkable program. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) broadcast a show dealing with AIDS. They opened their phone lines to the whole world. Then they started giving the facts. The facts, if they do not change, are going to restructure Western Civilization as nothing has in over 400 years. But no one quite gets around to saying this.

But what they do admit is bad enough. Before the disease has run its course, world public health officials estimate, ABOUT ONE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE WILL DIE FROM AIDS, WORLDWIDE. That figure was confirmed later that evening by Surgeon General Koop on the Larry King television show.

A hundred million people is as many people as those who died in all the wars and concentration camps of the twentieth century (excluding China — no one knows how many died in China). I am using the estimate of Gil Elliot, TWENTIETH CENTURY BOOK OF THE DEAD, Scribners, 1971, p. 1. But it will happen in a little over a decade.

At present, the number of those coming down with the third stage of the disease, called full-blown AIDS, is doubling each year. The mathematical precision is uncanny. The head of the public health department predicted to Rev. Ed Rowe in 1985 the number of people who would die from AIDS in 1986. His estimate was accurate TO THE MAN.

VANITY FAIR is no doubt the most cleverly and accurately named magazine in the U.S. (Vanity Fair was the city of hedonism in John Bunyan’s 17th century allegory, PARADISE LOST.) The March issue contains an article, “One By One.” It surveys AIDS’s impact on New York City’s artistic community. In every field — opera, dancing, music, painting, drama — they have died. The deaths are accelerating.

But it goes far beyond the arts. It goes to the heart of the modern welfare State: the health-care delivery system. The VANITY FAIR article cites Dr. William Grace, chief of oncology (cancer) at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City. What he says is happening all over the country, but quietly — for the public has not yet begun to panic, and no official wants to be blamed: “Every ten to twelve months the number of AIDS patients doubles. Right now at St. Vincent’s, 45 medical beds — of our 315 beds available — are occupied by AIDS patients, and most of these are middle-class patients, not the drug users or others without medical coverage, who get sent to Bellevue. What happens next year, when we have ninety patients? And 180 the year after that? In four years we will have exhausted all the medical beds in New York.” Read it again: “IN FOUR YEARS WE WILL HAVE EXHAUSTED ALL THE

MEDICAL BEDS IN NEW YORK.” And what he admits for New York City is what faces every hospital in the U.S. Dr. Grace is blunt: “I think AIDS is going to devastate the American medical system.”

The National Academy of Sciences has released a study — a CONSERVATIVE study — that estimates 270,000 cases of full-blown AIDS in 1991. There will also be 179,000 deaths from AIDS. Now, let’s look at the number of beds in the U.S. Gene Antonio’s carefully researched book points out that there are 1,360,000 hospital beds available. Of these, about three-quarters are occupied at any given time. This leaves about 325,000 beds unoccupied. But as he points out, not all of these beds are suitable for full-blown residents. The first 10,000 patients who died from AIDS stayed an average of 167 days in the hospital before they died.

The actual outlay on each patient was $147,000. This means that it cost about a billion and a half dollars to care for them before they died. This does not count the loss of income associated with each person’s death. It does not count the taxes that will never be collected from them to fund the public health, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security systems.

If prices remain the same, which they won’t, as hospitals approach 100% occupancy — and it cost about $150,000 per dying victim — in 1991 it will cost in the neighborhood of $40 billion just to house them before they die.

In 1992, we will run out of available hospital beds. This means that when you take a family member to stay in the hospital, you will either be sent away, or be sent to a very expensive private hospital, or they will start stacking AIDS victims up in minimal-care, crowded facilities.

By then, many victims will be heterosexuals.

But after 1991, it starts getting really serious. Unless a cure is found, or for some reason the disease ceases to be lethal, the doubling process gets us. Those infected today now number between three million and four million. The incubation period, says Dr. Koop, is ten years. They don’t know how many people presently infected will actually get full-blown AIDS, but it may be as high as half. It may be 100%, if we wait long enough. But the disease is spreading fast. If it continues to double, 64 million Americans will be infected by the end of 1990. If it slows to half the present rate, and does so immediately, then “only” 15 million will be carriers in 1990.

This is why the BBC reported that medical health officials expect that 10 MILLION U.S. residents will die of AIDS by the year 2000. If we can keep the cost per patient to $150,000, it will cost $1.5 TRILLION just to care for them until they die. This does not count the permanent loss of jobs, skills, productivity, and the widows who will be thrown into the system with a few thousand dollars of life insurance — assuming that in the year 2000, there will be any private life insurance companies still in existence.

The disease is not hitting elderly couples now on Medicare. It is hitting the young. It is hitting those who are expected to finance the U.S. welfare system. It is hitting those who expect to be supported by the State in their “golden years.”

But this isn’t front-page news. Iran is. Or the latest gossip from the White House.

The day it becomes front-page news, the West is going to have a revolution. It will mark the end of the present statist, humanist, fist-in-God’s-face road.

In THE PLAGUE, the public authorities admitted a crises at the end of Part I of the book. When will Part I of OUR “book” occur?

KOOP’S CONDOM ARGUMENT HAS A HOLE IN IT

Dr. Koop is preaching condoms for teenagers. He wants a huge sex education program in the public schools. Here is the ultimate irony: the Christian conservative is now promoting the one program above all others that conservatives have fought for three decades: Federal sex education in the schools. The Koop report could have been written by the Gay Liberation Task Force on AIDS. Its solution is educational and technical, not moral and religious.

The only long-term solution is MORAL AND RELIGIOUS. We are not saved by knowledge. For three decades we have seen that sexual promiscuity increases with every sex education program introduced into the public schools. Conservatives have been yelling about this the whole time. Now, I fear, they will remain silent, and a full-scale sex education program with no holds barred will be given to our children.

Not MY children. They are in a private school, and that’s where they are going to stay. There is going to be a panic soon. When stories begin to get out about the AIDS plague in the local high schools and junior high schools, THERE IS GOING TO BE A WILD EXODUS FROM THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. You KNOW I’m right. All talk about “white flight” will end; regardless of race, color, or national origin, THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE GOING TO BE ABANDONED. It will begin to happen in waves, all over the country. The bureaucrats should know it’s coming. They will be desperate. The humanist left’s major institution of middle-class indoctrination is going to perish. I think it will happen before the mid-1990’s.

I suggest that if you have your children in a private school that the headmaster demand a blood test from all students 12 or over, at the beginning of each school year. Eventually, this will be expected. When the exodus begins, private schools will have to defend their students from outside contamination. We are talking about a plague, not the measles.

Dr. Koop wants us to teach eighth graders about the proper use of condoms. Baloney! We need to get our children educated about moral behavior, faithfulness, sexual restraint, and the horrendous risks to life if they violate these standards. Koop has become a kind of bureaucratic condom himself: preaching a prophylactic solution to a world facing a religious crisis. He has betrayed his trust. As a Christian, he has so far missed the key assignment of his career. No other Surgeon General in U.S. history has ever had the limelight focused on him, and he has become the agent of the conservatives’ mortal enemies. If you thought Siecus was a threat, consider Dr. Koop’s recommended program.

Look, PEOPLE DON’T USE CONDOMS WHEN KISSING. The Centers for Disease Control announced on January 11, 1985, that “There is a risk of infecting others by … exposure of others through oral-genital contact or intimate kissing” (cited by Antonio, p. 108). Is Koop crazy? No, Koop is simply a faithful representative of a morally corrupt and scared medical and governmental bureaucracy. He fears taking the needed message to the people. He fears public controversy more than he fears God. WE NEED A PROPHET, NOT A PUBLIC RELATIONS AGENT FOR CONDOMS.

But his gospel is having economic effects. Stocks in condom manufacturing companies have doubled or tripled. But Koop is being unfaithful to the God he worships and the community he serves. He has retreated into medical techniques as the nation’s haven of safety. It will not work.

First, people refuse to use them. By the time they are scared enough to begin, it will be too late. AIDS is an incredible killer. A single virus — or lenti (slow) virus — invades the victim’s cell, passes the genetic material to it, and then the victim’s own body does the rest. The cells multiply, replicating through the victim’s body. The immunity system is rendered ineffective. And in those rare cases where the victims survive the loss of immunity, THE AIDS VIRUS ATTACKS THE BRAIN. DEMENTIA IS THE RESULT.

Ed Rowe cites the only scientific study of condoms as a defense device. Of those couples using condoms, where one was infected, the other was infected in one out of six of the couples in the test. As Rowe says, this is the equivalent of playing Russian roulette with one bullet in the chamber. Of those who did not use condoms, five out of six transmitted it. This is Russian Roulette with five bullets out of six — far worse odds, but is it worth your life to rely on condoms? (FIRESTORM CHATS subscribers will receive my interview with Rowe in a few weeks.)

I agree entirely with Phyllis Schlafly’s open letter to Dr. Koop. He must publicly come out in favor of sexual abstinence until marriage. Nothing else will work. Nothing else has a chance. Our children will die unless they abandon sexual promiscuity. The sexual revolution, unless reversed, will kill them. Koop is betraying his trust — as a physician, as a Christian, and as the top medical spokesman of the Federal government. He was the only public official picked by President Reagan as a gesture to placate the Christian vote, and now Dr. Koop has turned to medical solutions that cannot do more than DELAY THE DEATH SENTENCE for millions of teenagers. He is betraying his calling. No public health official in U.S. history has ever had such a responsibility. None has been the key figure at the beginning of a plague. Yet he can only recommend condoms.

THERE IS NO SAFE SEX ANY MORE. There is SOMEWHAT SAFER SEX inside the marriage relationship, and nowhere else.

Here we find Dr. Koop, a vocal Christian, recommending condoms. HE IS SENTENCING YOUNG PEOPLE TO DEATH. They may believe him, and if they do, they will die. There is only one answer, at best: monogamy. He should be telling them that they are risking death if they try sex at all before marriage, and only in marriage after blood tests. I say tests, because a new AIDS virus, called LAV-2, has now appeared that does not show up in the present AIDS blood test.

The problem with AIDS is that the virus mutates rapidly. Any defense against it is thwarted by the rapidly evolving virus.

An EVOLVING virus: what a perfect means of bringing the age of Darwinian self-confidence to an end! God has a sense of humor.

GUERILLA TACTICS

At the briefing, one of the speakers related an unforgettable story. It’s a true story. It was reported a few weeks ago in Ft. Worth, Texas. A young married man was propositioned by a good looking woman. He hadn’t been a swinger, but he decided to take advantage of a special situation. When he awoke the next morning, the girl was gone. On the mirror, she had written a message in lipstick: “Welcome to the world of AIDS.”

He went for testing. He tested positive. Almost certainly, he will die from AIDS. Only somewhat less certainly, so will his wife.

There are thousands of AIDS victims who know they are going to die within 24 months. Some of them are resentful. ENVY IS DOMINANT. They have decided to bring down the “straights”, not because they can gain anything by the pain of others, but simply because they want to destroy them.

In New York City, 10% of the AIDS victims are women. Surveys indicate that 80% of women with bisexual husbands are unaware of this fact (TIME, Feb. 16, p. 52). Wives who trust their husbands had better have husbands worth trusting, and vice versa. Their lives depend on it.

Then come blood bank donations. According to Congressman Dannemeyer, there is a rule against allowing intravenous drug users from donating blood to public blood banks. These people supply about 17% of all AIDS-contaminated blood. There is no restriction against donations from homosexuals, who supply 83% of the AIDS-contaminated blood. Gays are asked voluntarily to refrain from giving blood if they SUSPECT that they might be carriers. As he said, “If gray-eyed people were found to carry AIDS, they would not be allow to donate blood. They have no powerful lobby in Washington.”

An outraged homosexual need only give blood to exact envious revenge against the straight community. Nothing is being done to protect the straights. The straights have no lobby to protect them. Yet.

If it takes a political revolution to get such a lobby, then this nation will experience a political revolution within three or four years. The backlash is coming, on a scale so massive that today’s liberals cannot comprehend it (and probably will not survive it — not if they remain liberals), and today’s conservatives, hiding in their closets, afraid to speak out to defend themselves or this civilization, will not be in there much longer.

I’m getting out of my closet with this issue. We are under siege. The homosexuals didn’t create this plague; God did. But they are the primary distributors.

Of course, it is really a waste of time to get angry with them. They won’t be around much longer. A decade from now, they will all be dead. There will be no gay lobby because there will be no male gays. (The irony of all this is that the one group that is probably safest is the lesbian community.) But we must recognize what we face. The disease will be here in a decade because judgment has come.

All over the country, physicians are personally donating their own blood before they submit themselves to an operation. This is being done quietly. I spoke to a surgeon about this recently, and he confirmed it. The Red Cross and other blood centers used to discourage this practice — too much paperwork. But for an extra fee, they do permit this arrangement.

If your are considering surgery, this is a must. If you belong to a conservative church, try to get other members with your blood type, or universal donors (type O) to donate for you. Blood donating for other members will become a major aspect of church charitable giving from now on. But understand, this is no sure-fire answer; it simply reduces risks. The AIDS plague will be in the churches soon enough.

The hospitals refuse to segregate AIDS patients from others. Former nurse Candice Comstive testified to the Houston City Council on Sept. 25, 1985. She had been fired from her job at the Memorial City Medical Center. She had been employed in the cancer wing. They assigned her AIDS patients without telling her that’s what they were suffering from. Those without infections but carriers of the AIDS lentivirus were not isolated. The patients were not confined to their rooms. “I had one AIDS patient in January, 1985, who was placed on “STRICT ISOLATION”. He was in the kitchen at 7:30 a.m. pouring himself coffee, which was not unusual. I suggested he return to his room, and with that he turned and vomited on me and the kitchen as well. I changed into “scrubs” and returned to my assignment of patients for the day. An unsuspecting “house-cleaning” employee with mop in hand cleaned up the mess left on the cabinets and floor.” They had no designated rooms for AIDS patients in the hospital.

You will love this: “Rooms at the end of the hall used for AIDS patients are also used by pediatric patients.”

She was fired. She was also told that “they did not think I would be able to find work in any hospital, though, because AIDS is being treated in the same manner all over. Nurses elsewhere have verbally validated that statement.” (Antonio, pp. 150-52).

Nurses are becoming the heroines of this story. Hospital administrators and physicians are the gutless villains. And you and I are the potential victims.

INSECTS

They keep telling us that the disease can be transmitted only by sexual contact. How do they know? They say that mosquitos carry it, but they do not transmit it. How do they know? Ed Rowe made this observation. To test the validity of the theory regarding insect transmission they need an infected person, an insect to bite him, and a volunteer who does not have the disease who will allow the insect to bite him. IF THE TEST PROVES POSITIVE, THE VOLUNTEER IS ALMOST CERTAINLY GOING TO DIE. They have had no volunteers, so far.

The prestigious British medical journal, LANCET, published this report two years ago (Feb. 16, 1985): There is little evidence for homosexual activity among African AIDS patients and seriopositive subjects. In Africa HTLV-III (the AIDS lentivirus – G.N.) appears to be transmitted through heterosexual contact or exposure to blood through insect bites or scarification. … (Cited by Antonio, THE AIDS COVER-UP?, p. 72.) If it turns out that mosquitos can transmit it, then you and I

are in the hands of God.

An Associated Press report last August revealed the following: PARIS (AP) — Insects contaminated with the AIDS virus have been found in two African nations, but there is no evidence that they pose a threat to humans, a leading French researcher said Tuesday, Aug. 26, 1986. Most of the 80 mosquitoes, cockroaches, ant-lions, tsetse flies and other insects tested from Zaire and the Central African Republic were infected with the deadly virus, said Dr. Jean-Claude Chermann of the Pasteur Institute. Having announced this, Chermann then took the Camus road to a

calm public: “There is no way of transmission to humans by mosquitoes or other insects.” Scientists are usually very guarded with their language. They use qualifying phrases, such as “at the present time, we believe…” and “There is no clear-cut positive research indicating…” This enables them to cover their professional backsides if counter-evidence is discovered. It also allows them to ask for more research money. But in this case, Chermann was certain – CERTAIN THAT IF HE ALLOWED THE PUBLIC TO DRAW OBVIOUS CONCLUSIONS FROM WHAT HE HAS DISCOVERED, HE MIGHT CAUSE A WORLDWIDE PANIC. So he said that the obvious is not possible.

Antonio, in a paper released after his book, refers to studies of African children. Over 15% of small children in the high AIDS regions of central Africa have been infected, and researchers believe bedbugs are the transmitters. As I told Antonio when he told me this: “Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite!” (“Taint funny, McGee,” as Molly used to say.)

Dr. Mark Whiteside and Dr. Carolyn MacLeod, researchers at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Miami, Florida, discovered evidence that AIDS was being transmitted by mosquitos in the town of Belle Glade, Florida (Antonio, p. 106). They presented their findings as early as April of 1985, but little coverage was given to them.

One public health official later broke a gag order from his superiors and went to the press about the Belle Glade crisis. Gus Sermos was (at the time) a public health official from the Atlanta Centers for Disease Control Assigned to Florida. He was abruptly moved from his post when he challenged CDC’s position that environmental factors had nothing to do with AIDS there. The community has a high percentage of NIR: Not Identifiable Risk. He testified before the state legislature in early January, 1986.

In 1986, an official with the county health organization of Houston said that he believes that mosquitos transmit AIDS. In 1987, he was fired. Camus was on target.

Dr. James Slaff of the National Institutes of Health reports that the AIDS virus can stay alive outside the body for several days, unlike most other retroviruses. It can survive for up to a week in a dried-out tube or petri dish (LANCET, Sept. 28, 1985). Later studies indicate that the beasties survive for 10 days (Journal of the American Medical Association Medical News, 22/29 Nov. 1985, p. 2866; cited in Antonio, P. 111.) Six months later, the Pasteur Institute said it survived for over 15 days at room temperature (p. 112).

But what does the Federal government say? In 1986, Dr. Robert Redfield, who is with the Department of Virus Diseases of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, wrote a report for Abbott Laboratories in which he assured us, “The virus is fragile outside the human host and appears to be easily killed by detergents, hand soaps, alcohols, hydrogen peroxide, phenolics, and sodium hypochloride. High and low pH and an exposure to high temperatures will inactivate or kill it.”

But it can survive at room temperature if someone coughs, and remain dormant for over two weeks. A real “fragile” disease.

What is fragile is the government’s sense of calm, and its public image of being fully in control.

LIFETIME CONTAGION

Other epidemics could be controlled by quarantine. They came fast, and they went fast. The exception was tuberculosis. Now, horrifyingly, this dread disease is returning as a side-effect of AIDS.

How can you quarantine a hundred million people? You can’t execute them, yet this is the only means of removing the first cousin of the AIDS lentivirus which attacks sheep.

You simply wait. And pray. And take steps to reduce the likelihood of your family’s contracting the disease. But the problem is, pandemics reach a stage called CRITICAL MASS. At some point, the disease leaps the normal transmission barriers and spreads far beyond. This may not happen with AIDS. Yet it may.

In Texas, there have been 2,000 people with full-blown AIDS. So far, 1,300 have died (62%). By 1991, state health officials estimate there will be 16,000. It will be 60,000 by 1996. The plague is here. The world will eventually panic. When it does, who will be ready with answers? Which group will pick up the pieces?

THE END

This article was reprinted from Gary North’s REMNANT REVIEW, Vol. 14, No. 5, March 6, 1987. It also appeared in The Counsel of Chalcedon, April-May, 1987.

For more information on this subject, read the following books. They are probably available at a Christian bookstore near you, or you can order them from The Counsel of Chalcedon for the indicated donation amount from the address below:

THE AIDS COVER-UP? The Real and Alarming Facts About Aids by Gene Antonio ($25)

HOMOSEXUALITY: A Biblical View
by Greg Bahnsen ($20)

THE AIDS EPIDEMIC, A Citizen’s Guide to Protecting your Family and Community from the Gay Plague
by Lawrence E. Lockman ($15)

The address is:

The Counsel of Chalcedon
3032 Hacienda Court
Marrieta, GA 30066

By the way, a subscription to The Councel of Chalcedon newsletter, one of the best Christian newsletters available, is $15 a year.

Also, the following cassette tape series by Joseph C. Morecraft, III, pastor of the Chalcedon Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, is available:

Homosexuality & AIDS I (I Corinthians 6:9-11) Homosexuality & AIDS II (Deut. 28:15-22; Rev. 6:7-8) How God Removes Dross From a Culture (Isaiah 1:18-26)

This set of crucial messages can be ordered for $12 from:

Multi-Media Ministries
P. O. Box 28358
Atlanta, GA 30358

An interview with Gene Antonio, author of THE AIDS COVER-UP?, source of much of the information in this article, is available on cassette tape for a donation of $10 (I think) from:

Focus on the Family
Box 500
Arcadia, CA 91006

AIDS1.TXT

This article was reproduced in text file form by Bob Nance, SYSOP for the DOMINION Conference NEWLIFE Christian BBS a 24 hour Bulletin Board System in Clarksdale, MS 601-627-5582

Please share it freely with everyone you can. Thanks… BN 6-23-87