I can’t understand why this wouldn’t be a cure for someone infected with HIV, the AIDS virus: put them in one of those plastic bubbles like they use for people with genetic immunological deficiences. No germs, no opportunistic infections, no AIDS, right? –Bob Kernell
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The other problem is that AIDS makes you vulnerable to germs that are already in your body. For example, there’s toxoplasmosis, which people sometimes get when they eat undercooked meat or handle kittens. In normal adults toxo produces mild symptoms (swollen lymph nodes, fatigue). But it remains in the brain and muscles, and if you subsequently get AIDS it can lead to encephalitis and eventually abscesses in the brain, causing headaches, seizures, and convulsions.
I could go on, but it’s too depressing. If you get HIV doctors will try to determine what infections you already have and do what they can to prevent you from getting anything else. (If you don’t already have toxo they’ll tell you not to change any kitter litter boxes, for example.) But this merely prolongs the inevitable. So far as is now known, AIDS will kill everyone who contracts it.
A promising locale for upside-down lightning spotting is the Empire State Building in New York, a focus of lightning research for many years and a dramatic refutation of the myth that lightning never strikes the same place twice. (In a typical year it gets jolted more than 20 times.) Watch the ESB from a safe distance some stormy day and you may notice a stepped leader start atop the building and sprout cloudward. Sort of a metaphor for the whole NYC ‘tude: do unto them before they get a chance to do unto you.
