The tragic irony is that the foundation of this proliferating superstructure appears less and less sound with each passing year. It is based on the shaky premise that a single, always-fatal retrovirus is the sole cause of an ever-lengthening list of "AIDS" diseases. Since its proclamation by the Reagan administration in 1984, the HIV hypothesis has produced wildly inaccurate epidemiological predictions, no vaccine, no cure, and no reliable treatment. It has come under heavy criticism from an ever-growing number of scientists, activists and medical journalists - including several Nobel Prize winners.

Scientists unbeholden to the AIDS Establishment have published detailed papers suggesting that HIV may be not only harmless, but perhaps even nonexistent - a kind of laboratory construct formed from proteins released into the blood under immunological stress. Yet even while HIV comes under question, the multi-billion dollar economy based on the HIV/AIDS premise continues to grow. An array of expensive, highly toxic drugs are now routinely dispensed to large numbers of gay men, drug addicts, prisoners, children and pregnant (mostly poor) women, frightened by blood test results which careful research has shown can be caused by a multitude of conditions from leprosy to flu.

In the urban gay ghettos of the Nineties, a whole AIDS Culture has emerged - a culture with a powerful attraction for young, unattached, urban men. In the Seventies and Eighties, gay lifestyle consumerism (fast food, fast drugs, fast sex and quick-fix medicine) was marketed aggressively to urban clones. Ads for immunosuppressive drugs such as the corrosive nitrite inhalants known as "poppers" constituted a major source of advertising revenues for gay magazines. Now, it's the AIDS lifestyle that's promoted. Once "diagnosed" and initiated through the rigors of the dubious HIV test, the individual attains new Positive "status" as a patient, i.e., a recipient of care, attention and government assistance, and a potential customer for an array of consumer medicines and other AIDS-related products and services. Pharmaceuticals and kitschy jewellery, home testing kits and insurance buyouts are all advertised widely in glossy, mass-market magazines aimed at gay men.

Even the gay newsmagazine The Advocate, no critic of the AIDS establishment, acknowledged that "everywhere you look, the media send the message 'It's sexy to be HIV-Positive'." Glossy magazines like POZ promote a Positive lifestyle and a sacrificial AIDS culture to a gay market. In an article on "the glamorization of AIDS" Advocate writer Todd Simmons quoted POZ founder Sean Strub as saying that his magazine "tries to make everyone look as attractive as possible."

The development of the new AIDS culture from the old clone culture is described by the diarist Paul Reed in his book The Savage Garden. Many of his friends, Reed writes, "have resumed a life that is in many ways similar to the life we pursued a decade ago - the gym, the afternoon rest...the clubs...The difference is that we now no longer work to pay the bills, we simply collect our disability checks. And we no longer feel that this is the beginning of a hot, fast, life. It may be the last party, the final fling."