While real killer diseases that could be prevented or cured get scant attention.
Calls for prevention highlighted the opening day of the 16th International AIDS Conference in Toronto. Unfortunately, it’s too late. On the same day, the Washington Post carried a photo on its front page depicting a man wearing a T-shirt that read: “We all have AIDS.”
Toss out those condoms; forget abstinence, and don’t bother getting tested. Or what part of “all” don’t you understand?
Seriously, this bit of propaganda is but one illustration of how AIDS prevention has always been handicapped by politics. Nobody believes we all have AIDS; but many have bought into the “Everyone is at risk” nonsense that clearly works against targeting those truly at risk. The entire science of epidemiology – which began when London physician John Snow determined that cholera cases in his city clustered around a single water pump – depends on identifying risk factors to ameliorate them. In Snow’s case, he simply removed the pump handle and the epidemic ended.
He was lucky he didn’t have to deal with activists carrying signs reading: “Water doesn’t cause cholera; ignorance and prejudice cause cholera!”
Since 1985, when Life magazine blared in huge red letters: “Now No One Is Safe from AIDS,” activists have fought furiously against the idea that AIDS targets those who engage in selective behaviors. Yet over two decades later AIDS remains in this country overwhelmingly a disease of homosexual males and intravenous drug users. Fewer than 39,000 Americans were diagnosed with AIDS in 2004 (latest data available), and fewer than 16,000 died from it. That’s about one in 770 and one in 1,875 respectively. Fact is, almost everybody is safe from AIDS.
But of course, the focus of this conference is on international AIDS, which we all know is wiping whole continents off the map. A high Ugandan official said that within two years his nation will “be a desert.” ABC News Nightline declared that within 12 years, “50 million Africans may have died of AIDS.”
Problem is, those predictions were made in 1986 and 1988. Yet since 1985, Uganda’s population has doubled. Nightline’s 50 million dead by the year 2000 proved to be 20 million by 2005, according to the UN’s estimate. Further, “In sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the largest burden of the AIDS epidemic, data also indicate that the HIV incidence rate has peaked in most countries,” according to the 2006 UNAIDS Report.
Yet the UN itself has historically grossly exaggerated the world AIDS threat. For example, in 1998 it estimated that 12% of Rwandans age 15-49 were infected; now it says it’s only 3%. Whoops. On the other hand, other agencies had estimated a horrific 30% of Rwandans were infected. According to James Chin, a former U.N. official who made some of the earliest global HIV estimates, such concocted figures are “pure advocacy.”
Yet former President Bill Clinton told conference attendees that, “It’s difficult to imagine how the world can grow unless we tackle AIDS.” In fact world population growth is fastest in areas hardest hit by AIDS.
As for the bizarre assertion that AIDS remains yet to be tackled, UNAIDS reports that 1.3 million people in low- and middle-income countries received antiretroviral therapy in 2004, up from a fifth that number in 2001. Donated blood is now screened in even the poorest countries. The level of AIDS testing and education in poorer nations has skyrocketed.
Meanwhile, worldwide AIDS spending averaged $1.7 billion between 2002-2004 but reached $8.3 billion for 2005 and is slated to hit $10 billion in 2007. The size of that pie, and the desire to have a slice of it, is all you need to know to understand how the Toronto conference could attract a stunning 24,000 attendees who have been rightly labeled “the AIDS industry.” Nevertheless, insists UNAIDS, that $10 billion isn’t nearly enough.
No matter that even the current AIDS budget swamps spending on malaria and tuberculosis, which together kill about twice as many people annually as does AIDS. Antiretroviral therapy for AIDS cures no one, but it does cost relatively little in the Third World ($300-$1,200 per person per year) compared to North America. By contrast, TB can be cured with $65 of medicine.
Malaria in Africa and Asia can be prevented for a pittance – about $3 per home – by spraying DDT on the inside walls of houses, to protect everyone inside for a year. Yet, environmental activists and the European Union have essentially blocked its use in areas most need it.
Alas for these victims, they don’t have a politically correct disease. And for that they must die.
I couldn’t agree more. The “everyone is at risk” line has long offended me. I can say with certainty today, this week, or this year, I will not contract hiv. We know how it’s spread and we know how to avoid it. You can’t say that about m.s., leukemia, or a whole myriad of other diseases.
As far as aids in other parts of the world, I believe the political correctness surrounding this disease has made the problem worse by not focusing on the morality issue. The “who are we to impose…” line comes to mind.
The billions continue to pour in while the victims of other diseases are forgoten. I think the last sentence of the article is a great one.
I agree with Paul, great last sentence. But it’s not just in Africa that people suffer and die simply because their disease isn’t politically correct, it goes on every *day* in this country.
If the time, money, and effort spent on AIDS (a 100% *preventable* disease) were applied to cancer, colitis, MS, diabetes, and other “non-hip” diseases, how quickly would effective treatments and even cures be found?
(As an aside, the conspiracy theorist in me thinks that a cure for cancer would lead to a resurgence in the tobacco industry, and the libs can’t have that)
I watched both my mother and my favorite uncle (who was like my second father) die of various forms of cancer. My best friend is currently battling colitis. They didn’t engage in any kind of behavior that was a direct cause of their ailments. But because they didn’t contract a “cool” disease, my mom and uncle are dead and my best friend suffers every day.
Every time AIDS is mentioned (without mentioning how it’s one of the few 100% preventable diseases), I think of them and get angry.
AIDS Industry Pushes Politics Over Health
The very first second that people pushed for government intervention in the AIDS issue it was doomed to become a money and resource sucking black hole. As it now stands with untold millions being poured at it, where is the incentive to find a cure??? If that statement sounds unthinkable, you understand mankind very little.
Micheal Fumento has made accurate analyses of AIDS for the past two decades. His book, “The Myth of Hetersexual AIDS” told the facts. And the AIDS industry hates him for it.
“We all have AIDS” is not a slogan meant to inspire fear of infection. It is a statement that attests to the global impact of the virus.
I find it somewhat ironic that this website is titled "Intellectual Conservative Politics and Philosophy" when so many of the arguments in this article are misguided and/or offensive. When you compare the epidemiology John Snow used to AIDS, do you mean that you want to remove the cause? Snow got rid of a water pump; are you trying to get rid of the carriers of HIV/AIDS? And as for the idea that AIDS targets selective groups, such as homosexuals or intravenous drug users–there was indeed a brief period when AIDS was contracted almost exclusively by gay men and IV drug users. But at this time the disease was also contracted by hemophiliacs or people who received blood transfusions. Are they to blame for their "irresponsible behavior"? And for that matter, are gay people or drug users to be sentenced to a fatal disease for having sex, or for using a dirty needle? Conservatives often talk about the right to life when they discuss abortion. Don't people with AIDS have a right to life, too? Besides, as the AIDS epidemic expanded, so did the demographic of victims it affected. In the modern world, ANYONE is at risk. Heterosexuals, homosexuals, women, children. EVERYONE. The following arguments about AIDS affecting the populations of Africa also seemed blatantly ignorant. When Clinton said that the world could not grow unless we tackled the AIDS problem, I am almost positive he did not mean in terms of population. Most likely he meant that we could not progress as a global society until we had eliminated a disease that affected many nations and groups and that was creating both physical and social problems for millions upon millions of people. Do you suggest that since NOT ENOUGH millions of people have died, AIDS is not the problem it is declared to be? Because the fact is that over 35 million people are living with AIDS, and of those, over 2 million have died, many of them children. People belonging to the so-called "AIDS industry" do not want funding and research into the disease because it is hip, or cool, and they do not believe that research into other diseases should be put on hold while they find a cure for AIDS. What they want, along with anyone else affected by the disease–and anyone else with empathy for the victims–is attention to and the reversal of this horrible, deadly disease that is causing millions of deaths and millions of people to suffer.
When I think of AIDS I don't think of the questions you ask. I think, you know that sodomy causes AIDS, so why do you do it? Ohooo, you want to die? OK, go for it!
Even if you have a problem with homosexuality and the way they choose to have sex, (which is no one's business and shouldn't be a point of dissesnion, first of all) what about all of the straight people with AIDS? The hemophiliacs who contracted the disease from a blood transfusion, or the babies who got the disease from their mothers? Even if you believe homosexuality is wrong, which is a whole other argument, you can't say that AIDS is only caused by sodomy.
Yes I can. But, if it's no ones business then I don't see any reason to pay for it.
Okay, my mistake, I misspoke. You CAN say that AIDS is only caused by sodomy, but you'd be lying.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001620/