From: mpmNS@fcolcc.hampshire.edu (mpmNS) Newsgroups: sci.med.aids,sci.med,misc.health.aids,soc.motss,bionet.molbio.hiv,sci.answers,misc.answers,soc.answers,news.answers Subject: Sci.Med.AIDS FAQ part 1 of 10 Followup-To: sci.med.aids Date: 22 Nov 1994 13:57:43 -0600 Organization: Hampshire College Lines: 519 Sender: sma@wubios.wustl.edu Approved: phil@wubios.wustl.edu (J. Philip Miller) Message-ID: <19591@sci.med.aids> Reply-To: aids-faq@family.hampshire.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: wubios.wustl.edu Archive-name: aids-faq/part1 Posting-Frequency: monthly Last-modified: 10/8/94 AIDS FAQ part 1/10 Welcome to the sci.med.aids, the international newsgroup on the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (see Q1.1 `What is sci.med.aids?' for more details). This article, called the sci.med.aids "FAQ", answers frequently asked questions about AIDS and the sci.med.aids newsgroup. The FAQ is posted monthly to sci.med.aids and related newsgroups. If you are new to sci.med.aids, please read it before posting articles or responses. If you are a sci.med.aids veteran, please skim the FAQ occasionally. You may find something new here. Please contribute to the sci.med.aids FAQ. Currently there are some gaping holes. Send suggested changes to aids-request@cs.ucla.edu. You don't have to format it: just send it. Disclaimer: Much of the information here is quoted from other sources. We try to keep things as up to date and accurate as possible. Understand however, that there may be individual parts of this FAQ that you may not agree with, or may not feel is accurate. Feel free to point this out to us, but we reserve the right to leave it as it is. You can skip to a particular question by searching for `Question n.n'. See Q1.13 `Formats in which this FAQ is available' for details of where to get the PostScript and Emacs Info versions of this document. ============================================================= Contents of Entire FAQ Section 1. Introduction, General Information, and FAQ Administrative Details Q1.1 What is sci.med.aids? Q1.2 Discussion topics. Q1.3 Sci.med.aids distribution. Q1.4 Subscribing and unsubscribe to sci.med.aids. Q1.5 What is a moderated newsgroup? Q1.6 Editorial guidelines. Q1.7 How do I submit a posting? Q1.8 The moderators. Q1.9 Cooperative moderation - and voting on posts. Q1.10 If a post gets rejected. Q1.11 Discussing sci.med.aids moderation policies. Q1.12 Feedback is invited Q1.13 Formats in which this FAQ is available Q1.14 Authorship and acknowledgements Section 2. How to prevent infection. Q2.1 How is AIDS transmitted? Q2.2 How effective are condoms? Q2.3 How do you minimize your odds of getting infected? Q2.4 How risky is a blood transfusion? Q2.5 Can mosquitoes or other insects transmit AIDS? Section 3. General HIV/AIDS info Q3.1 Testing Information. Q3.2 AIDS and Opportunistic Infections. Section 4. Treatment options. Q4.1 General treatment information. Q4.6 Alternative Treatments for AIDS and HIV (please contribute) Section 5. Social Services Available. Q5.1 Guide to Social Security Benefits. Q5.2 What if you can't afford AZT? Section 6. The common debates. Q6.1 What are Strecker and Segal's theories that HIV is manmade? Q6.2 Other conspiracy theories. Q6.3 Is HIV the cause of AIDS? Section 7. Information Sources. Q7.1 Phone Information about AIDS. Q7.2 Phone Information about AIDS drug trials. Q7.3 US Social Security: Information for Organizations Q7.4 Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis. Section 8. Internet resources. Q8.1 Ben Gardiner's Gopher AIDS Database Q8.2 CDC AIDS Public Information Dataset. Q8.3 HIVNET/AEGIS Gateway (BETA VERSION) Q8.4 Other USENET newsgroups. Section 9. Other Electronic Information Sources. Q9.1 List of AIDS BBSes. Q9.2 National AIDS Clearinghouse Guide to AIDS BBSes. Q9.3 National Library of Medicine AIDSLINE (please contribute) Q9.4 Commercial Bulletin Boards Q9.5 Lesbian/Gay Scholars Directory. ============================================================= Section 1. Introduction and General Information Q1.1 What is sci.med.aids? Q1.2 Discussion topics. Q1.3 Sci.med.aids distribution. Q1.4 Subscribing and unsubscribe to sci.med.aids. Q1.5 What is a moderated newsgroup? Q1.6 Editorial guidelines. Q1.7 How do I submit a posting? Q1.8 The moderators. Q1.9 Cooperative moderation - and voting on posts. Q1.10 If a post is rejected. Q1.11 Discussing sci.med.aids moderation policies. Q1.12 Feedback is invited Q1.13 Formats in which this FAQ is available Q1.14 Authorship and acknowledgements ------------------------------------------------------------------- Question 1.1. What is sci.med.aids? "sci.med.aids" is a USENET newsgroup which discusses AIDS and HIV. A gateway forwards articles posted to sci.med.aids to a BITNET listserv mailing list called AIDS. Thousands read sci.med.aids, including people with HIV infections, published authors, researchers, public health officials, and interested individuals. It is carried in several countries, particularly in the Americas and Europe. Sci.med.aids is moderated by a team. When you submit an article to sci.med.aids, it must be approved by a member of the moderation team. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Question 1.2. Discussion topics. Sci.med.aids covers topics of interest to people with AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), their friends, relatives, and loved ones, AIDS service providers, educators and researchers, and the general public. Some common topics are Causes of AIDS and opportunistic infections. Vaccines for AIDS. Treatments or cures for AIDS and opportunistic infections. AIDS prevention and education. Sci.med.aids carries some regular magazines. Here's a current list: CDC AIDS Daily Summary AIDS Treatment News The Veterans Administration AIDS Info Newsletter If you have the time to add to this list, we invite you to contribute (if you obtain copyright permission, of course). --------------------------------------------------------------------- Question 1.3. Sci.med.aids distribution. Sci.med.aids is distributed as a USENET newsgroup, where it has approximately 40,000 readers. At one time USENET was carried primarily at research and educational institutions, but that is changing; a number of commercial services now carry USENET. Here is a breakdown of comparable newsgroups, for the month of September 1993. You can obtain a full list of network traffic by anonymous ftp from ftp.uu.net:/usenet/news.lists/USENET_Readership_report_for_Jun_94.Z +-- Estimated total number of people who read the group, worldwide. | +-- Actual number of readers in sampled population | | +-- Propagation: how many sites receive this group at all | | | +-- Recent traffic (messages per month) | | | | +-- Recent traffic (megabytes per month) | | | | | +-- Crossposting percentage | | | | | | +-- Cost ratio: $US/month/rdr | | | | | | | +-- Share: % of newsrders | | | | | | | | who read this group. V V V V V V V V 54 130000 1387 72% 6769 10.4 12% 0.08 2.8% soc.motss 72 120000 1130 79% 3396 5.0 17% 0.05 2.3% sci.med 86 110000 1301 63% 4001 7.1 13% 0.06 2.6% alt.drugs 139 95000 947 77% 4898 7.8 42% 0.09 1.9% sci.skeptic 156 89000 870 78% 1282 1.7 37% 0.02 1.8% sci.psychology 243 75000 862 67% 4057 9.4 15% 0.11 1.7% talk.abortion ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - 515 51000 512 76% 485 1.6 2% 0.03 1.0% sci.med.aids ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - 553 49000 487 77% 135 0.3 17% 0.01 1.0% sci.med.physics 577 47000 514 70% 257 1.2 0% 0.02 1.0% soc.feminism 653 43000 611 54% 3917 2.2 77% 0.04 1.2% alt.feminism 657 43000 506 65% 770 1.3 56% 0.03 1.0% talk.politics.drugs 772 37000 509 55% 2063 5.5 1% 0.11 1.0% alt.sexual.abuse.recovery 781 37000 403 71% 777 6.4 1% 0.17 0.8% misc.activism.progressive 791 36000 602 46% - - - - 1.2% alt.homosexuality 885 33000 363 69% 553 0.7 54% 0.02 0.7% sci.anthropology 981 30000 323 70% 680 1.0 9% 0.03 0.7% sci.med.nutrition 1207 23000 277 63% 797 1.2 15% 0.05 0.6% misc.health.alternative 1746 11000 210 38% 53 0.1 6% 0.01 0.4% bionet.molbio.hiv 1821 10000 153 50% 205 0.3 6% 0.02 0.3% alt.support.cancer 1847 9700 198 37% 158 0.2 7% 0.01 0.4% bionet.immunology 1870 9400 142 50% 136 0.2 20% 0.01 0.3% sci.med.radiology Sci.med.aids is also distributed as electronic mail by the AIDS listserv. Mail is not as convenient a way to read sci.med.aids as is a newgroup, but mail is available at more sites (including Compuserve, America Online, MCImail, ATTmail and many institutions which have Internet gateways). In additional to these primary distributions, sci.med.aids is redistributed by various bulletin boards and mail gateways. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --- Question 1.4. Subscribing and unsubscribe to sci.med.aids. The answer to this question depends on your system. You may have to ask your local system administrator. Here are some guidelines valid on many systems: * You may have USENET on your system, especially if you run UNIX or VMS. Here are some commands to try: "rn", "trn", "xrn", "nn", "tin". If they work, try joining the newsgroup "sci.med.aids". That might not work, since some sites limit the newsgroups they receive. All is not lost: you can get sci.med.aids by e-mail. * If USENET is not available you can get sci.med.aids by e-mail. Send a mail message to listserv@rutvm1.rutgers.edu. The message body should contain just the following command: subscribe aids Type in your real name (not your e-mail address) instead of . A complete message might look like this: To: listserv@rutvm1.rutgers.edu Subject: subscribe aids Joe Smith To unsubscribe, send a message to listserv@rutvm1.rutgers.edu containing the text unsubscribe aids Please unsubscribe before your account expires. The moderators get all sorts of junk mail if you don't. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------- Question 1.5. What is a moderated newsgroup? A moderated newsgroup is one in which all postings must be approved by the moderators before being distributed. The purpose of moderation is to restrict what can appear. Postings which do not adhere to the guidelines for the group will be rejected. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ---- Question 1.6. Editorial guidelines. As with any newsgroup, read sci.med.aids for a few days before posting, to see if your question has been answered already, and to get a feel for the tone of the group. Postings to sci.med.aids should: * Write on topics directly relevant to AIDS, HIV, or related topics. * Unconventional medical/research claims must be accompanied by references to the popular press (i.e., major newspaper, magazine, etc.) or scientific press (i.e., Science, Nature, Lancet, Scientific American, Cell, Brain Research, etc.). We require references for unconventional medical/research claims, because some therapies carry with them potential danger. Some unconventional medical/research claims are fallacious. Without this policy, sci.med.aids would have printed several dangerous and undocumented therapies by now. * Political, sociological opinion/analysis articles are acceptable. The interpretation, and even the existence, of this particular policy continues to be the subject of internal debate among the moderators. However, in the past we have printed articles holding both popular and unpopular opinions on topics like "Quarantining HIV Positives" or "who did Clinton appoint to the AIDS Task Force." * Refrain from personally attacking other participants. For example, do not call someone an 'idiot' or say they are 'biased'. Instead, point out the flaws in their argument. If you find yourself getting angry at a poster, and construct a reply, please try to remember this rule. It is often useful to wait a day to see what other reactions have been posted before sending something off in anger. * Send one line "quips" as personal mail to the original submitter, rather than posting. * When posing a question to a previous poster, reconsider whether the question needs to be posted. Perhaps you could ask the question by e-mail and request a posted response. * Do not invoke religion. * Do not break copyright laws. Reprints of articles from other sources must include a statement of permission to reprint. An exception is made for abstracts of articles from scientific journals, which are not usually restricted. If you can't get reprint permission, excerpt or summarize the article. * Do not construct an article with more than 20% text from a previous article, unless it is very old (i.e., months old). The best approach when constructing a response is to tersely summarize the article to which you respond, in square brackets. For example, In article <11233@sci.med.aids>, Dan Greening wrote: > [reasons to not include too much of a prior article] Also, don't forget that many people get this stuff by mail, so huge inclusions clog hundreds of mailboxes, including mine. Thanks. * Do not duplicate something which has recently appeared. The moderators don't always agree on what's acceptable and what's not. If an article is rejected, you should receive a note from the moderators saying why. These notes, and other discussions about the running of sci.med.aids will be distributed on the aids-d mailing list (see Q1.10 Discussing sci.med.aids moderation policies.'). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - Question 1.7. How do I submit a posting? This depends on the software you are using. On many USENET systems, you can use the command postnews You can also post by sending your article as e-mail to aids@cs.ucla.edu. Because sci.med.aids is moderated, your submission will not appear immediately. Sometimes the delay is very short; often it may be 24 hours or more. It depends on network delays and how busy the moderators are. A tickler program reminds us of postings older than 48 hours. IMPORTANT: Whether you use postnews or e-mail, please format your article exactly the way you want it to appear in the newsgroup. Because our moderation software is somewhat unpolished, editing out notes to the moderators in a posting is quite tedious. If you must communicate directly with the moderators, send a note to aids-request@cs.ucla.edu. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Question 1.8. The moderators. Four people currently moderate sci.med.aids. They are Phil Miller Professor, Biostatistics, Washington University Jack Hamilton Interested layperson Dan Greening Founder sci.med.aids, Director AppWare C++, Novell Jeff Rizzo Interested hemopheliac with AIDS Lauren Ferguson Librarian Phil, Jack, Jeff and Lauren do most of the moderation. Dan repairs the moderation software. Phil is probably the most liberal moderator, Dan the most restrictive. Various individuals have been moderators in the past, including David Dodell Founder, Grand Rounds fidonet echo, Dentist Steve Dyer Writer, Gay Community News, Software Consultant Alan Wexelblat Freelance writer, ethicist Tom Lincoln Informatics Director, USC Medical Center Craig Werner MD/PhD Student, Albert Einstein School of Medicine Will Doherty Gay Activist, technical writer Sun Microsystems Michelle Murrain Health researcher and professor, Hampshire College -------------------------------------------------------------------- Question 1.9. Cooperative moderation - and voting on posts. Cooperative moderation seeks to limit the burn-out associated with newsgroup moderation, by sharing the workload among several moderators. In addition, it provides a more balanced treatment of contentious issues. An early paper on the sci.med.aids cooperative moderation scheme is D.R. Greening and A.D. Wexelblat, Experiences with Cooperative Moderation of a USENET Newsgroup, Proceedings of the 1989 ACM/IEEE Workshop on Applied Computing. available by FTP from cs.ucla.edu:pub/aids.paper.ps.Z This paper is also available from the UCLA Computer Science Department as a technical report. At present, a voting system has been added to the moderation process. When you submit an article, moderators vote. 2 yes votes post an article, while 2 no votes reject an article. The first threshold to be exceeded determines the result. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Question 1.10. If a post is rejected. We reject many articles because of formatting problems, other mechanical problems, or our own confusion, and those articles can be revised quickly (by you) and resubmitted. There are about 73,000 readers of sci.med.aids on USENET alone. Articles posted here are distributed in many forms. We share information with AEGIS, an AIDS bulletin-board network. We have a parallel mailing-list. Some people copy articles from sci.med.aids and provide them to their local library. Activists have even printed out articles from sci.med.aids and distributed them to homeless people with AIDS. If you have important information, we urge you to spend the time to revise your article and resubmit: it will be read. On the other hand, these 73,000 readers are why we are so cautious about posting. Respect your huge audience by spending the time to write a readable and informative article. If you carefully investigate and share important AIDS information through sci.med.aids, you can save lives, make people a little healthier, or reassure someone. All of these are valuable. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Question 1.11. Discussing sci.med.aids moderation policies. A separate mailing list, aids-d, has been set up for the moderators and for people who interested in how sci.med.aids is run. Most readers will not be interested in aids-d; its purpose is internal discussion rather than information dissemination, and most articles on aids-d are examples of what moderation has filtered out. If you want to subscribe, send email to aids-d-request@sti.com. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --- Question 1.12. Feedback is invited Please send us your comments on this FAQ. We accept submissions for the FAQ in any format; All contributions comments and corrections are gratefully received. Please send them to aids-faq@family.hampshire.edu. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --- Question 1.13. Formats in which this FAQ is available This document is available as ASCII text, an Emacs Info document and PostScript. We currently make only the ASCII text available as a posting. We are working on establishing a sci.med.aids archive where the other formats will be stored. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Question 1.14. Authorship and acknowledgements The following people contributed to this FAQ: Dan Greening assembled and edited this document. Jack Hamilton wrote the introduction and first section. Phil Miller offered periodic edits. Michelle Murrain updated and edited this document in August, 1994. Anne Wilson forwarded many valuable articles from the CDC National AIDS Clearinghouse. Robert Walker wrote the section on minimizing the risk of HIV infection. Michael Howe's sci.med.aids response regarding blood banks is reproduced here. Paul M. Karagianis contributed archives answering question about mosquito transmission. Iain Nicholson, who works on Plasmodium falciparum, wrote the section on malaria. Vince Hammer wrote the review of ``Do Insects Transmit AIDS?'' Michael Howe provided references for the question "Does HIV cause AIDS?", and has scanned several documents for this FAQ. Ken Shirriff wrote about the USSR disinformation campaign. Rob James wrote a description of the US blood testing process. David Wright wrote the reasons why we should not donate blood to get a free HIV test. David Mertz wrote the section on internet access to the gopher database. Michelle Murrain wrote the section on the CDC patient data FTP site.