Reminder of the AIDS hype

This is a rather old article, but it's prevelance and importance in paramount when reading and discussing the "AIDS epidemic." The biggest problem that I have with the AIDS hype, is that almost all AIDS cases today are easily preventable, especially in the US. The cure or treatment of AIDS for whoever has it, isn't a bad thing, but there's only so much federal and charitable money allocated to for disease research in the US and the world. Unfortunately, AIDS is receieving the lions share of that money, when it could be better spend on other more unpreventable diseases. Every dollar that is spent on AIDS research takes away from money spent on cancer or leukemia research.

...it turns out that AIDS in Africa -- which doesn't even require an HIV test to diagnose -- may be a very different condition than AIDS in America. Evidence shows that "AIDS" in Africa is just a new description of many age-old diseases common to nations in misery and war with starvation, wrecked economies and ruined public health services. HIV tests, essential to any diagnosis of AIDS in the United States, aren't even given in Africa, except to tiny samples of the population. For Africa, there is the "Bangui Definition." (which specifies), the patient must have two of these three symptoms: "prolonged fevers for a month or more, weight loss over 10 percent, or prolonged diarrhea," combined with any one of several minor symptoms -- chronically swollen lymph nodes, persistent cough for more than a month, persistent herpes, itching skin inflammation or several others. But many of these symptoms show up from other African diseases, now vastly spread because of the political chaos.

Poor sanitation, poverty, malnutrition and parasitic diseases were always common and are now endemic. In America, AIDS is a name for 30-odd diseases found together with a positive test for HIV antibodies. Consequently, being HIV positive is the requirement for a diagnosis of AIDS in the U.S. In addition, there's even a credibility problem with such HIV testing as it is done. ....False positive test results with the common HIV ELISA tests can come from many causes, including pregnancy and diseases endemic to poverty-stricken Africa, such as malaria, tuberculosis and leprosy. The Western Blot is a more precise follow-up test, but expensive and rarely done in Africa. ... Transmission to infants from infected mothers' milk is reportedly widespread, but can't really be checked until 15 months after birth, when the infant develops its own antibodies.

"It's also a money game, and Africans learned to play it," says Michael Fumento, author of "The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS" -- "going to places with high rates and then extrapolating positive test results over the entire nation, because that's where the money is. If diseases are diagnosed as traditional, few Westerners care, but if they are described as AIDS, money and help come flowing in from Western nations." For example, tuberculosis deaths have now been reclassified as AIDS deaths in many African statistical reports.

It's the same disease, but now it qualifies for help. These facts are amazingly unreported in America...In questioning the reason for what appears to be gross exaggeration of AIDS statistics, experts bring up the old legal term of "Cui bono" -- who benefits? The list is very long.

In money terms, first there is the pharmaceutical industry....Then there is the public health establishment. More billions can go for salaries, offices, staffing, travel and long reports. The World Health Organization budget has skyrocketed along with African AIDS statistics... In America, government AIDS money is spread far and wide. Federal spending now tops $10 billion and is increasing yearly even as case loads fall.

One of the most pernicious effects of the scare tactics is the wish to "prove" that AIDS is a heterosexual disease that "anybody can get," distracting from its most recognized form of transmission -- intravenous drug needle sharing and unprotected anal sex. As Bethell writes, "The failure of American AIDS to 'explode' into the general population led the authorities to look for the phenomenon elsewhere.... If the very high AIDS spending by the U.S. government is to be sustained, the emergency would have to be drummed up elsewhere, ... so Africa beckoned..."

However, contradicting the highly-publicized "heterosexual" AIDS infection rates in sub-Saharan Africa, HIV is difficult to contract. Under normal, healthy conditions, the chances of an infected man transmitting the virus to an unprotected woman are less then 2 in 1,000, according to the World Bank. And the August 15, 1997, "American Journal of Epidemiology" reported that male-to-female transmission of HIV is extremely difficult, requiring on average one thousand unprotected sexual (non-anal) contacts, and female-to-male requires
on average 8,000.... WND