The HIV genocide delusion

I think journalists do need to specifically ask Barack Obama about his perspective on the HIV genocide conspiracy theories. He didn't address this directly in his speech, in retrospect that's a noteworthy omission.

AIDS conspiracy theories: a field guide. - By Juliet Lapidos - Slate Magazine

... Barack Obama rebuked his former pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright on Tuesday for giving sermons in which he blamed the government for creating a racist state and "inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color." Wright isn't the first to say that AIDS originated in the White House. Others have attributed the epidemic to a laboratory accident, malnutrition, or even God's divine will...

...According to a study released in 2005 by the Rand Corp., more than one-quarter of African-Americans believe the disease was engineered in a government lab, and 16 percent think it was created to control the black population...

I've read that this belief is also widely held in South Africa. Even if the US government were ten times as evil as Cheney/Bush, we don't have the technology to create a virus like HIV. We also don't have the power or technology to create a massive evolutionary and cross-species profile of the evolution and dissemination of HIV and its cousins.

One of my questions about Obama is how grounded is he in the world of logic and science. We already know McCain is arational, I'd like to know where Obama fits on the spectrum between Al Gore (reason) and George Bush (delusion).

The Slate article is quite well done; it's worth a full read.