CAPITOL IDEAS: AIDS in Africa
Bethell, Tom
CAPITOL IDEAS TOM BETHELL AIDS in Africa: A Political Epidemic WAS PLANNING TO WAX INDIGNANT about rock stars like / Bono and Bob Geldof who have been preaching in the White House about...
...But in sub-Saharan Africa, in 20 years, the population increased by more than the entire population of the United States (296 million today...
...Recently, the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, D.C...
...And they have begun to address some of the more important matters, such as African rulers who steal the money and put it in Swiss banks—bad government, in short...
...Billions need to be shipped right away...
...Since 1985, then, the population of sub-Saharan Africa has increased by 299 million people—a 70 percent increase...
...General Assembly said recently that "you can break down figures that show that 300 million people south of the Sahara don't have clean water...
...Sickness, caused by the prevailing unsanitary conditions, could now be called "AIDS...
...Repeated fever for more than a month, 3 points, repeated diarrhea, 3 points...
...Africans can be forgiven for thinking that Americans believe there are too many of them...
...Sewage and sanitation crumbled...
...And we know the treatment for that: nucleoside analogs, protease inhibitors, highly active anti-retroviral treatment—those are the recommendations of the AIDS activists...
...The Times has systematically misreported the AIDS story since 1985...
...An epidemic is defined as a widespread outbreak of an infectious disease...
...From the Daily Mail, July 20, 2005: African trypanosamiasis, also known as sleeping sickness, [is] one of several horrific diseases to have made a big resurgence in south Sudan and other forgotten corners of Africa in recent years...
...Altman's background suggests that he must have known better...
...Nov...
...American public health officials say "no problem...
...An epidemic of politics, yes...
...Altman has been the paper's main AIDS reporter since the epidemic began...
...It is where Jean-Bedel Bokassa crowned himself emperor, plundered the treasury, and ate his enemies...
...2003) but I have new information, so listen up...
...Page 15 "scores" the various conditions that define African AIDS: Weight loss of 10 percent and a protracted feeling of weakness (called "asthenia") get 4 points each...
...Families live in shacks fashioned from cardboard boxes and 38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 2005 twisted metal...
...Sub-Saharan Africa and western Asia are the fastest growing regions of the world," says the Population Reference Bureau...
...The "African AIDS" epidemic began as the meeting ended, because the unhealthy environment had already generated these symptoms in millions of Africans...
...They will work to create a hospital surveillance system to determine the extent of AIDS in Africa...
...And one more thing: the unsanitary conditions were sufficient to cause "AIDS...
...He wrote what may even have been the first article on AIDS for a national newspaper, which appeared under the politically incorrect headline, "Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals" (NYT, July 3, 1981...
...Abbott Laboratories, manufacturer of the main HIV test, said in 1997 that "at present there is no recognized standard for establishing the presence and absence of HIV-1 antibody in human blood...
...The official who noted the deterioration in Kinshasa, Joseph B. McCormick, was responsible for organizing a meeting in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic...
...And by 1993, Planned Parenthood was preaching that "sex between men and women is the most common cause of HIV infection...
...He described the mother with infant who lights up with a smile when offered a bottle of water, knowing that "the only alternative is to walk for two or three miles and then only to get polluted water...
...And that is what happened...
...Is that where liberalism is headed...
...It is "one of the most severely poverty-stricken countries on the continent," McCormick wrote...
...Without treatment, the disease is fatal...
...In one article he mentioned the Bangui meeting, but with no details...
...A spreading infectious disease does wonders for public-health budgets...
...The 10 million orphans...
...And defined that way, there has been no AIDS epidemic in Africa...
...At the meeting, "AIDS in Africa" was defined anew...
...All government agencies have a vested interest in their own expansion, and all are inclined to stress the crises that will appear if their 40 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 2005...
...In parts of tropical Africa a deterioration of the physical infrastructure swiftly followed the end of colonial rule...
...For years we have been warned of the tremendous African AIDS crisis...
...McCormick describes this bold act of redefinition in a book called Level 4: Virus Hunters of the CDC (1999...
...Oh, and don't forget to use condoms...
...Let's hope they don't see the recent Andy Rooney column, in which he complained: "The birthrate in Africa is a disgrace and birth control information and conTOM BETHELL doms should be handed out before the food...
...The culprit is the human immunodeficiency virus...
...But they do want to see an improvement on the ground...
...What is concealed in the fine print, however, is that many conditions, including pregnancy, are sufficient to trigger a "false positive" on the HIV tests...
...From London's Daily Telegraph, July 6, 2005: On the outskirts of African cities, in vast shanty towns, human beings endure privation and squalor of a kind that disappeared from the rich world generations ago...
...Well, we know what caused all this disease in sub-Saharan Africa, don't we, because we read about the "epidemic" almost every day in the New York Times...
...For two decades, the newspaper has campaigned against an illusory crisis...
...McCormick went on to become assistant to the director, Division of HIV/AIDS at the CDC...
...Epidemic Intelligence Service in 1963 and became editor of the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report...
...People must defecate into plastic bags, tossing the results onto piles of refuse...
...The Bangui definition established heterosexualAIDS, because the defining symptoms are found in women as often as men...
...CAPITOL IDEAS TOM BETHELL AIDS in Africa: A Political Epidemic WAS PLANNING TO WAX INDIGNANT about rock stars like / Bono and Bob Geldof who have been preaching in the White House about Africa's plight...
...Many deaths, the causes of which had never before been specified or even reported, were simply placed in the "HIV/AIDS" column...
...The sub-Saharan population in 2004 was 733 million, they said...
...Enough time has now elapsed-20 years exactly—to know that this has not happened...
...Henceforth a combination of the following symptoms would suffice for an AIDS diagnosis: weight loss, fever, diarrhea, swollen glands, a cough, prolonged fatigue...
...No HIV test, and therefore no HIV, was needed to make the AIDS diagnosis...
...You will come to a WHO document: "WORKSHOP ON AIDS IN CENTRAL AFRICA, Bangui, Central African Republic, 22 to 25 October,1985...
...I shall explain why...
...Cough, 2; swollen glands, 2, and so on...
...The president of the U.N...
...Whenever an HIV test is administered in Africa, they say, the percentages found to be "positive" match those estimated to have AIDS by the above definition...
...Let's say that population is the same now (no doubt it's higher...
...The issue is sensitive because it suggests that Africans were better off—or at least were in better health—under colonial rule...
...At night the city was brilliant with light, and when you turned on the taps, water would flow out...
...Well, that soon changed, because heterosexual transmission was established—by redefinition in Africa...
...published its "World Population Highlights...
...Aid officials, under the thumb of the State Department and diplomatic to a fault, don't like to mention such things...
...An official from the U.S...
...Later he was chief of the U.S...
...HIV tests are administered at pre-natal clinics in South Africa, and many women are found to be "positive...
...He also sits on an advisory board that administers a CDC fellowship program...
...But there's something else that no one wants to mention, especially not politically progressive rock singers...
...Therefore "AIDS" in Africa has never been shown to be the same as AIDS here...
...The political roots of the alleged epidemic have remained concealed...
...Population Division estimates that the sub-Saharan population of Africa was 434 million in 1985—the year when the "AIDS pandemic" began...
...I have written about this before (Oct...
...conditions have been shown to trigger a false positive, so the test is essentially useless in countries where bacterial contamination is endemic...
...Rock musicians have other incentives, vanity admittedly among them...
...IHE PROBLEM HAS BEEN ACUTE at the Times, both because of its national influence and because its longtime AIDS reporter, Lawrence K. Altman, is a former employee of the CDC...
...The diagnosis of AIDS is established when the score is 12 or more...
...One convincing way to demonstrate a real epidemic would be to show a sharp increase in mortality and a decline in population...
...Laurie Garrett, who has made a career for herself predicting "plagues" that never arrive, com1)1 OCTOBER 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 39 CAPITOL IDEAS pares it to the Black Death—in which perhaps one-third of Europe's population died in a few years...
...The sheer dishonesty of the New York Times and other media in not reporting these facts is hard to take...
...Security Council...
...Aid agencies are mostly interested in enlarging their own budgets...
...When he returned in the 1980s he was "struck by how much the place had deteriorated...
...What do they know...
...About 70 Sickness, caused by the -evailing unsanitary conditions, could now be called...
...Centers for Disease Control (CDC), who was in Kinshasa, Zaire, in 1965, found it was then still "a city that worked—a marked contrast to what it's like these days...
...The U.N...
...Naked infants have nowhere to play, save for ditches running with sewage...
...Altman graduated from the agency's The Times has systematically misreported the AIDS story since 1985...
...Public Health Service's Division of Epidemiology in Washington...
...8, 1985]) Over the last 20 years, the Times has in effect formed an unacknowledged alliance with the CDC...
...There has been no acknowledgment that public health agencies—particularly the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization—have their own vested interest...
...An African "orphan" is someone age 15 or more with one parent "missing...
...Let them eat retrovir, nevirapine, AZT...
...Now I am beginning to suspect they know as much as the politicians—not that that is saying much...
...Fetid heaps of rubbish are everywhere, sometimes dotted with scavenging vultures...
...The Bangui meeting, in October 1985, was ostensibly run by the World Health Organization but actually set up by the CDC...
...You can look it up for yourself Type "Bangui1985report" into Google...
...In 2000, Al Gore and Madam Secretary Albright took the issue to the U.N...
...Sleeping sickness, virtually eliminated in the 1960s, now afflicts up to 300,000 new victims in Africa each year and the figures are rising...
...HAT ABOUT THAT VIRUS and the AIDS epidemic...
...Traffic coasted down wide, well-maintained boulevards flanked by palm trees...
Vol. 38 • October 2005 • No. 8
