Death Rush

From AIDS Wiki

Death Rush: Poppers & AIDS (ISBN 0943742056) is a 1986 book by John Lauritsen and Hank Wilson.

Contents 1 Available in PDF format 2 Contents 3 Quotes 4 Reference

Available in PDF format

The entire book is available in PDF format: Death Rush . It is also available in HTML format at Pagan Press.

Contents

• Poppers & AIDS
• Nitrite Inhalants: A Bibliography
• The Poppers Industry and its Influence
• Appendix A: Koch's Postulates: The Case Against LAV/HTLV-III's Being the Sole, Sufficient, or Necessary Cause of AIDS
• Appendix B: A Toxicological Model
• Appendix C: Occam's Razor: The Drugs Connection

Quotes

• "'Poppers' – a drug which has been prominent in the gay male lifestyle since 1972, are a liquid mixture of isobutyl nitrite and other chemicals, packaged in small bottles under such names as 'Rush', 'Ram', 'Locker Room', 'Bolt', and 'Crypt Tonight'. When inhaled just before orgasm, poppers seem to enhance and prolong the sensation. In time, they become addictive, a sexual crutch. Poppers are a dangerous drug: known to cause immune deficiency, anemia, strokes, and lung damage, and suspected of causing cancer. Many independent researchers have warned that poppers are a major risk factor for the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Since 1981 the San Francisco-based Committee to Monitor Poppers has been collecting literature on the nitrite inhalants. Its archives have provided the core of this book: a critically annotated 34-page Bibliography of reports from medical journals and other publications. From experiments on mice, from laboratory and epidemiological studies, the evidence powerfully mounts that poppers are hazardous to the health, and causing gay men to develop AIDS. Notwithstanding their toxicity, poppers have been sold legally in almost every state. The poppers industry, grossing upwards of $50 million a year, has succesfully evaded testing or regulation of any kind by claiming that poppers are really a 'room odorizer' or 'incense'. The poppers story is an ugly one, involving outwardly respectable academics who furnished the poppers industry with fraudulent research – government officials who used statistical trickery to mislead the public – government scientists guilty of incompetence and blind obstinacy – gay leaders who testified for the poppers industry – gay publishers who valued advertising dollars more than the lives of gay men. The book ends with an analysis of the "AIDS virus" hypothesis, concluding that LAV (or HTLV-III) cannot possibly be the cause of AIDS. A toxicological model is put forward as plausible – that gay men and intravenous drug users are developed AIDS because they are being poisoned, presumably by the drugs they are using." (Lauritsen & Wilson 1986)

Reference