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From causing the munchies to causing AIDS, amyl nitrate — aka “poppers” — has had an extended moment in popular culture over the past few years.
For those who don’t spend time in gay clubs, poppers may seem kind of mystifying. In reality, there’s not a lot to them: it’s a huffing liquid, often sold as “VHS cleaner” to get around legal loopholes, that’s known to cause brief sensations of lightheadedness, euphoria, and — perhaps most notably — the relaxation of certain muscles including the anus.
Now, however, poppers are undoubtedly going to be brought back up in certain heterosexual circles by none other than DMT and steroid enthusiast-turned-podcaster Joe Rogan, who erroneously suggested that the huffing drug used for anal sex and quick dancefloor highs may contribute to the spread of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) — more so than, you know, the actual virus that causes it.
During his latest interview with ivermectin-pusher Bret Weinstein, who has on several occasions taken to Rogan’s show to spew his nonsense, the host seemed to be in agreement with his guest about the disconnect between the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and AIDS. Unfortunately, that bogus claim is not at all new, and is often used as a covert means of homophobia given that HIV denialists often blame gay sex and culture for the continued AIDS epidemic rather than governments around the world failing to treat it as a serious and deadly disease.
While discussing COVID-19, medical conspiracists‘ favorite topic for the last four years, the pair veered into another pandemic — namely, HIV/AIDS — as an “example” of knowledge being supposedly hidden from the public.
Specifically, Rogan and Weinstein were discussing a book about former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and presidential health advisor Anthony Fauci, who earlier in his career oversaw the US government’s response to the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1990s, when things took a decidedly wilder turn.
“There are patients who have AIDS who don’t have HIV, right?” Weinstein said, wrongly. “So that’s the problem. You need a richer toolkit in order to be able to establish a causal relationship.”
Again, this goes against all established science about HIV and AIDS, which has clearly shown for decades that people with HIV will develop AIDS if the virus is left untreated.
Rogan pointed out that the medical community’s acceptance of HIV developing into AIDS “ignores a very important factor in AIDS, which is party drugs.” He went on to reference disgraced molecular biologist Peter Duesberg, one of the biggest names in HIV denialism, whose “hypothesis” posits that recreational drug use in queer men’s communities is a more compelling factor than infection with HIV itself.
Duesberg, notably, seems to be particularly focused on poppers. On his very archaic-looking website, he even has displayed an article, penned by a different writer in “Reefer Madness” style, about the popularity of the so-called “party drug.”
Although the so-called “Deusberg hypothesis” is far from the worst or most dangerous thing Rogan has ever discussed on his podcast, it’s a chilling example of the dangerous half-baked bullshit his show is a party to — and that he pushes to his tens of millions of listeners, too.
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