What is your perception of the current pope?

The current pope

  • I believe he is a good man

    Votes: 15 33.3%
  • I believe he is evil

    Votes: 21 46.7%
  • I don't know for sure

    Votes: 9 20.0%

  • Total voters
    45

B_jeepguy2

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This is a fascinating topic and may well be the reason I never contracted it given my promiscuity (and heredity).

I think it would be an interesting debate were someone to begin a thread on this topic. jeepguy? Did you see the PBS special on the town in England where (according to some theories) an immunity was developed to HIV/AIDS during the Black Death (bubonic plague) of the fourteenth century?

There's also the man in San Francisco who's allowed himself to be INTENTIONALLY infected by the virus over fifteen times and never contracted it.

Again this would make a fascinating separate topic.

Yes, I saw the PBS special, the town in England is Eyam. Basicly if your ancestors survived the Black Death in Medeival Europe (there is still some question as to whether it was really bubonic plague or some other virus like ebola) you may very likely have this genetic mutation floating around in your DNA. The Delta 32 mutation is ONLY found in people of European descent.
 
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BigDallasDick8x6

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Are you for real ? While I grant you that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith isn't a particularly wholesome or edifying body it's not busting people's doors in and machine gunning them down, it used to be the Inquisition, but they can't burn you for heresy anymore you know. I think Benedict XVI is one of the most unpleasant men alive, but he's no more disgusting than any previous incumbent of the throne of Saint Peter, or any other religious leader for that matter. He seems pretty typically Christian to me.

Yes, I'm for real. Are you? How utterly shocked we all are that you would paint everyone with the same broad brush. Yes as usual you are correct -- none of them are individuals but they are identically the same in every way. :rolleyes:
 
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Yes, I saw the PBS special, the town in England is Eyam. Basicly if your ancestors survived the Black Death in Medeival Europe (there is still some question as to whether it was really bubonic plague or some other virus like ebola) you may very likely have this genetic mutation floating around in your DNA. The Delta 32 mutation is ONLY found in people of European descent.

We had something like that on telly here, too. Sub-Saharan Africans, etc may be more susceptible to contracting HIV than certain Europeans, because they haven't been exposed to other things that the European groups have developed a resistance to.
 
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isn't "honest christian" an oxymoron anyway?

or do i just think that because of sarah palin?

Sarah Palin has great foreign policy qualifications, because she eats baked alaska in the same meal as chicken kiev. Just thought I'd say. :wink:
 

D_Tim McGnaw

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Yes, I'm for real. Are you? How utterly shocked we all are that you would paint everyone with the same broad brush. Yes as usual you are correct -- none of them are individuals but they are identically the same in every way. :rolleyes:


Who's this "we" you're talking about ? Do you have a multiple personality disorder or something ? Whatever you're becoming pretty tedious, if you don't like what I post that's fine, but don't try to involve me in some internet-drama grudge marathon. I don't want to put you on ignore because in general I respect what you have to contribute and have enjoyed reading some of your posts but if your new thing is going to be picking on anything I have to say I'll gladly ignore you.
 
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Sergeant_Torpedo

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He is typical of his caste, ambitious, grasping, disimulating, and has played all the right cards for membership of the Roman curia. Christians are identified not by their words but by their deeds. It is sad because a man in his position could do great things for the benefit of mankind.
 

D_Smidley Smelliepits

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Are you for real ? While I grant you that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith isn't a particularly wholesome or edifying body it's not busting people's doors in and machine gunning them down, it used to be the Inquisition, but they can't burn you for heresy anymore you know. I think Benedict XVI is one of the most unpleasant men alive, but he's no more disgusting than any previous incumbent of the throne of Saint Peter, or any other religious leader for that matter. He seems pretty typically Christian to me.

Completely agree with hilaire, can't see any differences... Maybe John Paul II's face was more charming, but his ideas were the same.

This is a religious leader with serious clout that says people must not use contraception despite HIV/AIDS. Putting countless lives at risk during an epidemic just so as not to have shift the church's view on procreation-based sex?

Ubered's opinion supports my idea, since both of them condemned the use of condoms, increasing the risk of getting HIV. Isn't that a crime?
 

Astrate

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This is a fascinating topic and may well be the reason I never contracted it given my promiscuity.
I wouldn't bank on it though, Stronzo. The prevalence of the D 32 gene in Europeans is 1:7 tops. But to have the resistance to HIV you'd need to be homozygous, i.e. a matching pair, one from each parent. So both parents would need to be heterozygous, i.e. carry one, with the other gene being the normal, non-D 32 gene varient (allele).

Doing math: the chance of both parents carrying one allele is 1 in 7x7 = 1:49. That would only give you a 1:4 chance of ending up as homozygous. So if you don't know the D 32 status of your parents, the chance of you being homozygous is 4 x 49 = 196. Let's call it 0.5%. Pretty long odds.

However, being heterozygous is said to delay the onset of AIDS by an average of 2yrs if you get infected with HIV.


Ironically, the D 32 mutation is a damaged gene, which is meant to express a protein in the wall of certain white blood cells that helps fight infection, and the lack of it would reduce resistance to viruses. However, HIV actually binds to this protein and uses it to enter the white blood cell so that it cannot be attacked by antibodies. If this protein is missing HIV cannot enter the cell.

It does however raise the possiblitiy of gene therapy to turn people into homozygous D 32, and therefore resistant to HIV and then the pope can keep his condoms
 

B_Stronzo

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strate said:
But to have the resistance to HIV you'd need to be homozygous, i.e. a matching pair, one from each parent.

Genetically speaking that's not too tough a call. In the 17th century and prior to that I've traced each of my parents to a common ancestor easily thirteen times. One branch moved en masse from a very sparsely populated area of England to the boon docks of Martha's Vineyard where they intermarried from the mid 1600s until the influx of the tourist industry in the 1920s.

However I "bank" on nothing. Where do you come up with your information? It's really very focused.

You appear to have strate logic... I find you nearly see-through in where nine tenths of your posts are directed. It's not pretty.

strate said:
However, being heterozygous is said to delay the onset of AIDS by an average of 2yrs if you get infected with HIV.

Oh. Shall I, then, according to your inference bite my nails to the quick until my twenty-four months are up and I test negative?

Do you homework boy.

I maintain my negative status and that of my partner is decidedly not attributable to abstinence. His genetic background (not surprisingly) closely resembles my own.

The Pope doesn't believe in condoms.. you knew that yes?

December 2009?

Hmmmmm. I smell a rat.
 
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Astrate

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Oh. Shall I, then, according to your wishes bite my nails to the quick until my twenty-four months are up and I test negative?
No, you'd test positive, but it would buy you time. I only mentioned it to avoid confusion between the complete resistance and the partial resistance states.
The Pope doesn't believe in condoms.. you knew that yes?
I was being sarcastic, -making as if he was trying to stop us having any condoms.


But actually, his beef is with contraception, not condoms per se.
 

B_Stronzo

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No I don't care to explain. Use that vast store of knowledge you have to take a stab at my meaning. Suffice it to say I'm invariably suspect of those who lurk in cloaked guise. No good ever comes of it.

I find you confrontational and not in a kind way.

You are no one with whom I choose to have a dialogue.