[Lampman]

I haven't seen the film as yet,sounds a bit ominious,but I have come across this counter theory.It is a bit long winded but it makes a point:
Junk science is BIG business.

Remember Avian Bird Flu? Birds were getting sick and dying from a new strain of bird flu. The fear is that the flu would jump from birds to mankind, which it did in a few isolated cases, maybe. Hundreds of thousands of birds were being slaughtered, as a precaution. Scientists were telling us were were all going to die if we didn't work on a vaccine, and that funding would be needed to prevent millions of human deaths. I wonder how many grants were made to stop this "epidemic."

Think back to Y2K profiteering. A few programmer's and scientists said that some old, antiquated, rarely used computers might need to be updated for the year 2000. Likewise, old software may need to have a few minor updates and patches to be fully operational. The next thing you know, talking heads were warning that on January 1st 2000 that planes could literally fall out of the sky when their computers failed because they weren't Y2K compliant. We were told there would be anarchy in the streets when all public works systems failed because the computer systems helping them to function all shut down. Businesses were told that their computers would shut off, never to work again, and that all of their hard drive material and digital business documents would be lost forever. Businesses and government groups spent billions ensuring they would be safe when the ball dropped. And when the ball dropped, and nothing bad happened, anywhere, and all computers continued to function pretty much as before, whether they were certified Y2K compliant or not, the con artists Y2K compliance companies claimed that all their hard work had paid off. Disaster and the fall of all mankind had been averted thanks to their tireless bilking of companies and the government out of millions hard work. When all was said and done, the government and big business sighed a sigh of relief. Sure, maybe it was all a scam, but better to be out a few bucks and be assured that if the sky fell, it wouldn't fall on them.

How about AIDS? What happened to that? No offense to anyone who actually does have AIDS or whose friends, family members, etc actually do have AIDS, but I do not know a single person who has AIDS. This amazes me, because I remember being told as a child that by the year 2000, one in every 10 Americans would have aids. In middle school and high school health classes we were given flash cards and had to exchange signatures with five different classmates. A Student (A) was chosen at random, and was told that for the sake of the lesson they were HIV positive, and asked to stand up.One (A) HIV student. We were told that each signature represented sexual intercourse with the fellow student, so the first person on A's list, (B) was asked to stand up as well. 2 HIV Students (A,B). The second person on A&B's lists (B,C) were asked to stand up. 4 HIV Students (A,B,C,D). The third person on ABC&D's lists were asked to stand up. You see now how this works. Sure there was some overlapping, but by the time all 5 rounds were done, half or more of the class was standing. We were told that this is how AIDS spreads: through straight and homosexual unprotected sex, through drug use via needles, though accidental contact with blood, spit, etc of infected people. After years of this sort of instruction, it is amazing my generation ever got up the nerve to have sex at all. We were given estimates, that one in 10 of us will have HIV. In College, as freshmen, we were told that estimates were that between 5% and 10% of Americans could be HIV positive, and that the reasons that actual numbers were so far below reported cases was that most HIV positive people had no idea they were HIV positive. We were told that since as many as one in 10 Americans were HIV positive, and didn't know it, that in our small college community there were hundreds of future AIDS cases, and that unprotected sex was Russian roulette. It's now 2007. I don't know a single person with HIV. I've not known a single person, in the thousands of people I have met, that has ever admitted to being HIV positive. Billions upon billions upon billions upon billions of dollars have been spent on AIDS research. I still don't know a single person who has AIDS. I'm not saying they don't exist, AIDS exists, it is horrible, it is tragic. I do know a lot of people, but I don't know anyone with AIDS.

Why so much talk about AIDS? AIDS is a muli-billion dollar industry. In the early to mid 90's, you couldn't get grant money unless you were doing AIDS research. Bonafide research in other areas couldn't get a grant unless they found a way to connect their research to the AIDS discussion. Big hearted people have donated countless billions to AIDS research, AIDS support groups, AIDS awareness, International AIDS campaigns.

It is now 2007. You no longer need to be researching AIDS in order to get grant money, but the new HOT topic is Global Warming. Just like AIDS, just like Y2K, just like bird flu, this is big business. People's income depend on there being enough hype. Scholar's credentials depend on their research being "right." What starts off founded in science turns quickly into junk science. If it scares people, it makes headlines. If there are headlines there is grant money. It doesn't mean that there is no science behind AIDS/Bird Flu/Y2K/Global Warming, especially with AIDS, BUT we need to look at how much truth there is to all the hype, and we need to look at who has the most to gain by keeping the up the facade.