Is NPR blogger, Alva Noe’s response to the recent CDC’s advisory for boomers to get tested, a joke or is he serious?

Noe says that boomers are “five times more likely than the population at large to carry the hepatitis C virus.” (Actually 4.5 times but what matter?)

“Why should that be? We don’t know exactly, but a big part of the story is drug use. Lots of baby boomers shared needles back in the 1970s and ’80s.”

Noe then reports that HCVers are sort of like scary aliens from outer space:

Here’s where it gets interesting. …the target group — those infected by hepatitis C — blend in and look like everybody else.

Then he sounds a bit tongue-in-cheek:

…But stop and think about it. This means the target group — a group presumably consisting in good measure of former drug users — looks like the rest of us. Not only are they alive, this implies, but they are no longer using drugs!

Before sounding like he’s bought into the propaganda and stereotype completely:

What makes this remarkable is that it seems to imply this large population of drug users never got addicted, or that, if they did, they beat their addictions. The bottom line: They used drugs then, but are not addicts now.

Boomers, don’t be ashamed of yourselves.  You’re winners!

“This is great news! And it seems to run counter to some pretty widely shared ideas that we have about drug use and addiction. … And the medical establishment insists that once an addict, always an addict. Addiction, after all, they say, is a chronic incurable disease of the brain.”

You were reckless IV users who have beaten the medical odds to sobriety:

Maybe things aren’t so bleak.

Not bleak because this proves that people can shoot up addicting drugs and not get addicted–just don’t share needles?  That concept makes you feel optimistic about life?

Alva Noe, what are you thinking?

Well,  there are some comments from angry veterans to this post.  Is Noe being intentionally insulting, naive, or does he really doubt the official government PR regarding HCV?  I’m clueless.

Ed. note:

I vote sarcastic. It does meet the flat earth test. You have to keep a straight face when you discuss it. Or… there’s an error in the logic. One in ten Vets has HCV -five times greater than the 1.8% in the civilian populace. One in five are from the Vietnam era. 67% of those were in Vietnam or the Indochinese Peninsula comprising Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand as well. If you want to include the whole EFTO, then add in the Philippines and Okinawa. Occam’s razor does not seem to apply here. Another school of thought says  many were drafted; they were the dregs of society and moral reprobates as well. Add one drug addict w/ HCV to the jetgun line and– wait. Scratch that. Jetguns are not the culprit. Junkies are.