The three articles excerpted below are essential for
understanding AIDS in Africa, and Mbeki's dissent from the
Western corporate line that everyone has been force-fed. These
articles are long, detailed, well-documented, and very
illuminating about many things, not least the racism combined
with Puritanical, anti-sex attitudes inherent in most
conceptions of AIDS epidemiology in Africa. Great fun, and
rewarding reads, IMO. A well-informed reader will note that
the principal causes of the "AIDS epidemic" in Africa are the
same as the causes of the low-I.Q. "epidemic". They are:
malaria, impure water, parasitic infections, malnutrition
(micronutrients and macronutrients), tuberculosis, etcetera,
which are in turn caused largely by grinding poverty. The
articles cited below are essential for understanding
contemporary AFRICA, period -- not just AIDS or I.Q. These
articles explain the proximate causes of Africa's
backwardness.
The three articles are below, tagged:
DOCUMENT #1: Misconceptions About AIDS in Africa (Geshekter)
DOCUMENT #2: Mbeki's AIDS Orthodoxy Critique (Geshekter et al)
DOCUMENT #3: Nutrition, Parasites, and HIV/AIDS (Stillwaggon)
Just a taste:
"After the distinguished Harvard physician Paul Farmer found
himself at conferences where professional colleagues went
'practically purple with rage discussing Mbeki,' even accusing
him of genocide, he decided to look dispassionately at the
controversy. Farmer concluded, quite sensibly, that Mbeki's
message was that 'poverty and social inequality serve as HIV's
most potent co-factors, and any effort to address this disease
in Africa must embrace a broader conception of disease
causation.' Farmer acknowledged, 'this is precisely the point
many of us have tried to make... and we haven't been branded
as AIDS heretics.'"
I highly recommend the full texts, at the URLs, not just these
excerpts. But if you don't have time for that, and would
prefer an "easy-listening" version, try the following video of
Dr. Charles Geshekter on AIDS in Africa:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qUBagW-xWs -- Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZkrCm9wMKI -- Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l5IDC9bJyE -- Part 3
Here's Geshekter, from Part 2 of that video (at about 1.5
minutes):
"What AIDS has become in Africa is a great distraction. It
distracts us from the questions of better food, better clean
drinking water, more appropriate ways of getting rid of waste.
It puts the burden back on Africans and their alleged
promiscuous sexual activities. To that extent it is a
wonderful shortcut to avoid the harder, stubborn issues about
why is Africa so poor, why are its people suffering so badly."
Enjoy.
Alan
DOCUMENT #1: Misconceptions About AIDS in Africa (Geshekter)
http://www2.units.it/~etica/2007_2/GESHEKTER.pdf
Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, IX, 2007, 2, pp. 330-370
Myths and Misconceptions of the Orthodox View of AIDS in Africa
CHARLES L. GESHEKTER
Department of History
California State University, Chico
chollygee @ earthlink.net
"Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be
understood." --- Marie Curie
"To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even
better than, establishing a new truth or fact." --- Charles
Darwin
ABSTRACT
This article rebuts conventional claims that AIDS in Africa is
a microbial problem to be controlled through sexual
abstinence, behavior modification, condoms, and drugs. The
orthodox view mistakenly attributes to sexual activities the
common symptoms that define an AIDS case in Africa - diarrhea,
high fever, weight loss and dry cough. What has really made
Africans increasingly sick over the past 25 years are
deteriorating political economies, not people's sexual
behavior. The establishment view on AIDS turned poverty into a
medical issue and made everyday life an obsession about safe
sex. While the vast, self-perpetuating AIDS industry invented
such aggressive phrases as "the war on AIDS" and "fighting
stigma," it viciously denounced any physician, scientist,
journalist or citizen who exposed the inconsistencies,
contradictions and errors in their campaigns. Thus, fighting
AIDS in Africa degenerated into an intolerant religious
crusade. Poverty and social inequality are the most potent
co-factors for an AIDS diagnosis. In South Africa, racial
inequalities rooted in apartheid mandated rigid segregation of
health facilities and disproportionate spending on the health
of whites, compared to blacks. Apartheid policies ignored the
diseases that primarily afflicted Africans - malaria,
tuberculosis, respiratory infections and protein anemia. Even
after the end of apartheid, the absence of basic sanitation
and clean water supplies still affects many Africans in the
former homelands and townships. The article argues that the
billions of dollars squandered on fighting AIDS should be
diverted to poverty relief, job creation, the provision of
better sanitation, better drinking water, and financial help
for drought-stricken farmers. The cure for AIDS in Africa is
as near at hand as an alternative explanation for what is
making Africans sick in the first place.
[...snip...]
DOCUMENT #2: Mbeki's AIDS Orthodoxy Critique (Geshekter et al)
http://www.altheal.org/africa/aidspapergeshekter.doc
AIDS, Medicine and Public Health: The Scientific Value of
Thabo Mbeki's Critique of AIDS Orthodoxy
Charles L. Geshekter
Department of History,
California State University, Chico, Chico, California 95929-0735
chollygee@earthlink.net
Sam Mhlongo, M.D.
Department of Family Medicine,
Medical University of South Africa,
P.O. Box 222, Medunsa, South Africa
smmhlong@iafrica.com
Claus K”hnlein, M.D.
24103 Kiel K”nigsweg 14, Germany
Koehnlein-Kiel@t-online.de
Presented at the 47th Annual Meeting of the African Studies
Association
New Orleans, Louisiana
11 November 2004
NOT FOR QUOTATION WITHOUT PERMISSION
1. Introduction
In his installation address at the University of Witwatersand
in 1998, Vice Chancellor Colin Bundy reminded the audience
that a university "must encourage its academics and students
never to take knowledge as given, as fixed: they must
recognize that knowledge is `socially sustained and invested
with interests and backed by power'."1
This advice was forgotten when scientists and activists
gathered in Durban for the 13th International AIDS Conference
in July 2000 - then again in Barcelona/2002 and in
Bangkok/2004. They ignored the many paradoxes and
contradictions that arouse serious concern about the
reliability of African AIDS research. In the United States,
where AIDS was first identified, an imprecision about the
definition of the syndrome and its causation (abetted by a
lack of journalistic and social science scrutiny) still clouds
the public's understanding of HIV and AIDS.2
This paper evaluates how the assumptions and claims that
turned "AIDS is everywhere" into an American clich‚ are being
perpetuated in Africa. It scrutinizes the predictions of
increased numbers of AIDS cases in Africa to show how
conceptual flaws and questionable statistics mar conventional
studies. It suggests that western stereotypes, poorly
designed research and racist claims about African sexuality
have created the untenable conclusions about AIDS now
proliferating in Africa.
In a critique of armchair empiricism that applies to much AIDS
research, Margo Russell and Mary Mugyenyi showed how analysts
often squeeze "African data into inappropriate Western
categories" and "international agencies, with their passion
for international comparison...exert a strong pressure for
just the kind of standardization that sociologists should be
well-placed to reject."3
In many ways, AIDS has become a great diversion. The belief
that behavior modification will cure poverty disguises the
endemic conditions that cause the appearance of the "symptoms"
in the first place. Many AIDS activists and researchers
ignore the complexity of historical forces that propelled
parts of Africa into a downward economic spiral beginning in
the late 1970s that set the stage for the appearance of
"AIDS."
In the Reagan Era, a "Washington Consensus" dominated official
thinking about economic development in the U.S. government,
the IMF, the World Bank and private banks and foundations. It
called for sharp cutbacks in government spending, financial
liberalization, privatization of state-owned enterprises,
deregulation and the supremacy of the market over all other
values, policies that contributed mightily to the demise of
Africa. According to Joseph Stiglitz, an economist formerly
with the World Bank, during the 1990s, the number of people
living in extreme poverty (less than $2 per day) increased by
nearly 100 million, world-wide, with the disproportionate
amount being found in Africa.
Countries in east and southern Africa became so indebted to
and dependent on international financial institutions that
they were no longer free to make basic decisions about which
goods and services could be allocated.4 Beginning in the late
1970s, corruption and decay in the public health field, sharp
decreases in the prices of exported commodities, severe
restrictions on social services due to the IMF and World Bank
strictures of "structural adjustment," savage civil wars,
declining rates of immunization, and crowded refugee camps
were among the major forces afflicting Africa as the 20th
century ended. None of these forces were related to sexual
promiscuity.
2. Definitions
[...snip...]
DOCUMENT #3: Nutrition, Parasites, and HIV/AIDS (Stillwaggon)
http://www.ifpri.org/events/conferences/2005/durban/papers/stillwaggonWP.pdf
The Ecology of Poverty: Nutrition, Parasites, and
Vulnerability to HIV/AIDS
Eileen Stillwaggon
HIV/AIDS continues to spread throughout the developing world,
in transition countries, and among poor and marginalized
populations in industrialized countries. In some countries the
epidemic is still spreading rapidly. And today, in its third
decade, even with increased resources, global AIDS policy is
still failing to stem the epidemic. HIV prevention fails
because it ignores the fundamental causes of the epidemic, it
is unscientific, and it attempts to intervene at the last
minute with programs limited to behavior change.
The HIV epidemic is not an isolated event. It is the
predictable result of declining economies, insecure food
systems, and inadequate investment in water and sanitation.
The crisis of sustainable agricultural systems, most notably
in sub-Saharan Africa but elsewhere as well, has aggravated
the health crisis in developing countries and favored the
spread of HIV/AIDS. The collapse of agricultural economies
caused rapid urbanization, unemployment, and increasing
inequality. The AIDS literature addresses, to some extent, the
effect of economic crisis on behavior through the disruption
of relationships and pressures toward unsafe sex, in
particular in the form of commercial sex for survival. Little
emphasis, however, has been placed on the direct, biological
effects of malnutrition and unsanitary conditions on the
vulnerability of individuals and societies to HIV.
The epidemic of HIV cannot be explained by behavioral factors
alone, even though a necessary condition is contact through
sex, needles or other medical instruments, or mother to child.
Scientific evidence demonstrates the role of biological
cofactors - malnutrition and parasitic and infectious diseases
- in enabling the transmission of HIV. Although AIDS policy
organizations use the phrase, "AIDS is a development issue,"
they do not incorporate scientific information about the
diseases and conditions of poverty into their programming for
HIV prevention. Consequently, their policies are limited to
programs that address only behavioral factors. This paper
integrates analysis of poverty with the epidemiology of
infectious and parasitic diseases. Combining medical,
economic, and geographical data, it demonstrates the specific
disease synergies that promote HIV transmission in poor
populations.
How diseases spread
[...snip...]
Conclusion
The same conditions that promote high prevalence of other
infectious diseases and parasites are responsible for the
spread of the AIDS epidemic in poor populations. Programs to
prevent HIV transmission will be unsuccessful unless they
address the underlying causes of the spread of AIDS. HIV
prevention must be based on scientific evidence regarding
cofactor conditions, not on unproven assumptions about the
primacy of behavioral factors. Poverty eradication is the most
important objective in stopping AIDS epidemics. The
establishment of food security and investment in sanitary
infrastructure and education are integral parts of a program
of poverty eradication. Food security, deworming,
schistosomiasis prevention and treatment, and malaria control
programs must be incorporated into HIV prevention. Inexpensive
means are available for achieving these goals and
organizational support already exists that can be integrated
with AIDS programming.
The biggest constraint on malaria, helminth, or
schistosomiasis eradication has been the lack of adequate
institutional framework for implementing control programs. But
that is the same constraint that discourages investment in
myriad complementary programs. A broad program of investment
in public health infrastructure, such as clean water, plus
health care centers, and health and hygiene education is the
necessary base. Then the additional cost of a program for
parasite control or other intervention would be minimal.
Numerous analyses of HIV-prevention and treatment programs
argue that poor countries cannot absorb the billions of
dollars of anticipated expenditures. That is only true in a
very narrow and shortsighted view of developing country needs.
When the agenda is good health, not only HIV-prevention but
including that, there is no problem of absorptive capacity in
developing countries. There are ample opportunities for
investments - in water, sanitation, nutrition, health-care
facilities - with known benefits for a broad array of
problems.
[...snip...] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alan2012 (talk • contribs) 03:07, 22 May 2008 (UTC)