I learned long ago not to hang my rhetorical hat on anything as unreliable and insubstantial as a scientific report, especially when they are described as ‘surveys’. It always conjures up visions of earnest researchers scurrying about with clipboards asking random people multiple-choice questions about household detergents.
However, that said, it would not surprise me in the least to discover that this does, in fact, have some substance to it:
Millions of Africans believed to have HIV/Aids are free of the disease, according to research published yesterday.
The survey will dismay those who claim the West is ignoring a pandemic so acute it could wipe out the populations of entire African states.
I know exactly who those ‘dismayed’ people are. They are the lobbyists, charity scammers, tranzi office-holders, preachy celebrities and other assorted NGO-fodder who have turned AIDS into an international fund-raising and foreign junkett circus. Joining them will be a host of African kleptocrats who know only too well that ‘AIDS’ is the magic word with which to open the purse-strings of Western treasuries.
Africa still has that ‘dark continent’ quality about it that makes it impenetrably mysterious to gringos in the West. So when we are told by talking heads with august-sounding titles that squinty million zillion trillion people are dying of AIDS in Africa every four minutes, very few of us (if any) have sufficient knowledge of the situation on the ground to raise so much as a batsqueak of doubt. By the same token, it would all look the same if the figure-compilers lumped in deaths from all manner of other maladies and diseases in order to inflate the victim-toll.
I remember so clearly when AIDS became a big public health issue in Britain in the mid-80’s. From out of nowhere came legions of ‘experts’ to assure us that it really was the new ‘Black Death’ and it was poised to wipe out the civilised world. Resistance was futile. Most of us would be dead before breakfast.
It never happened in the West and maybe it is never going to happen in Africa either.
Even with the new numbers, the amount of HIV infection in Africa is still very high – not as high as claimed, but high in any case.
The first serious lying about AIDS numbers I read was in the US. In order to convince the world that this was not a “gay” disease and was not caused by particularly dangerous gay behavior, many groups scared folks to death by insisting it was about to hit the non-gay, non-drug-using community in a big way.
Of course, that never happened, and the HIV rate in the US has not changed significantly in a decade or more.
Tranzis and others, as mentioned, make good money off of scares.
Unfortunately, the over-focus on AIDS has diverted money from more important diseases, such as malaria and tuberculosis.
Your style of prose is second to none. It makes me laugh every time, even if your point is a serious one. You should post more often.
Peter Duesberg is vindicated.
An article almost a month ago in The Speccie detailed this. There are quite a few wasting diseases, which have absolutely no relation to AIDS, in Africa. Quite apart from computer-generated projections “inadvertently” being way off – these tens of thousands of other deaths are now being shovelled into the AIDS File. AIDS is where the money is.
The AIDS industry in the West is in a bit of a trough now, with tens of thousands of HIV positive men on retrovirals pumping iron and running three or four miles a day to stay fit and trim – a thankfully far cry from those days in the Eighties when we watched sufferers turn into skeletons who couldn’t lift a knife and fork before our eyes.
Time for the caravanserai to move on to a fresh oasis. So as David rightly says, the socialist-tranzi “caring” partnership is now getting burrowed into the Dark Continent. The Speccie article is in the 13 December issue, and the letters column the following week contains two letters from actual Africans who, from their tone, are getting a bit snappish about all this. One, who works in a blood bank, thanked The Speccie for the article saying that, to be taken seriously, it had to be written by a white man. If he had written such a piece himself, he would have been accused (presumably by the AIDS mafia) of being in denial. This indicates how well entrenched they already are in Africa.
The article is interesting and well worth the read.
I suspect that the report is correct- and that your analysis is close to the mark too. One thing you rarely here mentioned in the context of deaths in Africa from Aids is the prevalence of malaria in the same countries where Aids is having a bad effect. Malaria + Aids = a lot of deaths- but malaria could be greatly reduced by simple good practices on the parts of the African authorities.
As a HIV theory dissident, I feel that this evidence has been a long time in coming.
It may take another decade, but I am confident that the HIV theory will be abandoned. And then we can finally have people take responsibility for themselves. Want to take immuno-suppressive drugs and get AIDS? Be my guest. It’s your life.
*shrugs*
The Wobbly Guy
Hello Wobbly – I am not a medical person so don’t know anything about the validity of the connection between HIV and AIDS, but there has been so much dishonesty surrounding AIDS, due entirely to the AIDS mafia, that I wouldn’t discount anything.
In the early 80s, when I lived in the US, I told a gay friend it was ridiculous that the newly emerging AIDS lobby was trying to brainwash the straight population into the belief that we were equally at risk (or, other than blood transfusions) at the slightest risk at all. His response was pretty chilling. “Do you really think we’d get the funding for research and the pharmaceutical industry would put hundreds of millions of dollars into a vaccine or a cure if it was just a disease of faggots and druggies? Who cares if a bunch of fags and druggies die from their own behaviour? We have to make it into everybody’s problem to get the funding.”
Of course, it was a pragmatic move by the gay men (the druggies being too comatose to get themselves organised). So the entire AIDS edifice was based on deliberate lies right from day one. They are continuing this fine tradition today, in Africa.
There are lots of factors here but I would council against just ignoring the things peopel are saying about Africa. For a start the AIDS strain is, as I understand it, different to the western one. Secondly there hasn’t been the access, at least in places like South Africa to the retro-anti-virals which seem to have made such an impact in the industrial world. It has certainly moved it from a terminal condition to a life threatening but managed one. I’m told some virologists don’t think that will last long term.
My father-in-law is a church worker in a small town in Sotuh Africa, he used to be town treasurer. He’s told me some horror stories about the cost and logistics of keeping up with the rate of death from AIDS.
Likewise, when my wife worked in Ladysmith the factory next door to where she worked had their workers tested. 60% were HIV positive. The remaining 40% had full blown AIDS.
Neither my wife nor especially her father are particularly prone to exageration, nor are they charity scamers, “tranzi” office holders and so forth. It is a real problem.
Dave, as always, has inside information that proves everyone else wrong.
Like Dave in his wisdom, I also “council against ignoring the things people are saying about Africa” – which is that the AIDS mafia is perpetuating another scam. Your churchworker father-in-law, seems a little trusting.
As I said, reports indicate that just about every death from every wasting disease in Africa is currently being ticked in the column marked AIDS. More AIDS deaths, more UN workers, more Mercedes, more aid from Western governments, more pharmaceutical companies to bully, more passengers on the bandwagon. I am not talking about charity scams, of which I’m sure there’s a plenitude as well, but official scams in which governments and tranzis collude.
Read The Telegraph and The Spectator articles, and then give us, once again, anecdotal evidence regarding your family that throws grave doubt on what the experts say. Strange how you and your family seem to have had telling experience, that disproves the initiating article, with every single issue on Samizdata and England’s Sword and god knows where else.
Re your wife’s anecdotal (rather than scientific) evidence from the factory next door. You write: “Likewise, when my wife worked in Ladysmith the factory next door to where she worked had their workers tested. 60% were HIV positive. The remaining 40% had full blown AIDS.”
So, 60% + 40% = 100%, the whole factory had AIDS? I mean, the whole damn’ factory? And it wasn’t even in the news worldwide? Who checked these unusual stats?
A cynic might suggest that there was something in it for someone to come up with positive results. Read the letter from the African gentleman in The Speccie who runs a blood bank and see what he, on the ground, a scientist and in the establishment, has to say – anecdotal evidence from your family notwithstanding.
“Likewise, when my wife worked in Ladysmith the factory next door to where she worked had their workers tested. 60% were HIV positive. The remaining 40% had full blown AIDS.”
What is your definition of AIDS in the first place? Really, which definition are you using? The one which predicates the presence of HIV, or the state of disease where the afflicted person’s immune system, specifically the CD4 cells, are beaten down to point of collapse?
The definitions have been mangled to such a point that as a scientist(chemistry) and a logician(having a english degree is useful), I found it relatively easy to prove the circular logic in use.
Furthermore, how many tests did they carry out to get that magical 60% figure? One? Two? Which tests? Do you know how many tests are required in developed countries to confirm the presence of HIV antibodies? Do you even know just how accurate those tests are? What is the gold standard?
The entire basis behind AIDS is built on quicksand. Two years ago I raised the issue for debate for an english class. Nobody dared to take me on. Most of the students were from the arts and social sciences, and only about 5 of us were from the hard sciences. They all admitted that they had just assumed that whatever was said on the subject was true. They just accepted the common wisdom.
“Neither my wife nor especially her father are particularly prone to exageration, nor are they charity scamers, “tranzi” office holders and so forth. It is a real problem.”
But the point is, they are not people trained in the scientific method, and thus doubly susceptible to the propaganda thrown out by those in the know.
In the future, information will be widely available to whoever needs it. But will people actively search for the evidence and facts themselves, or will they simply accept whatever the authorities tell them?
And what does this imply for the libertarian movement, in a society where people are content to act like sheep?
The Wobbly Guy
Read The Telegraph and The Spectator articles, and then give us, once again, anecdotal evidence regarding your family that throws grave doubt on what the experts say.
Ok, I’ve read the Telegraph “article”, very lightweight in detail – interestingly the link to the raw data gives a URL error.
< Strange how you and your family seem to have had telling experience, that disproves the initiating article, with every single issue on Samizdata and England's Sword and god knows where else. Really, the funny thing is, I’ve read lots of reports and seen lots of articles which contradict this. I also have first hand testimonial from people whom I know and trust more than “names” on Englands Sword or Samizdata. Assuming the Kenya figures are correct that’s still 5% of the South African population, which is 1.25 million people infected and probably not recieving treatment. I think that’s a pretty serious problem, don’t you? But the point is, they are not people trained in the scientific method, and thus doubly susceptible to the propaganda thrown out by those in the know.
I think you mis-undertand their perspective. My wife was an operations manager for the next door business which then sold up. The medical reports formed the basis of a business decision her boss went on to take, of course, the workers all lost their jobs but that wasn’t the factory owners problem.
Her father was a town treasurer of a town a few miles from Durban and local church member who was dealing with a very real problem of what to do with the massive increase in Orphans and dead bodies.
Of course, this might all have been a fake to make work for my wife’s dad as he approached retirement, but I don’t personally think so.
Even if we reduce the figures by a quarter, and without access to the raw data from the Telegraph’s story, I think 5% of a population infected is a real and serious issue myself.
I’d suspect that its likely to be higher than that, particularly in South Africa due to other regional economic factors including the numbers of workers who travel around the continent to work there.
Dave, as always, has inside information that proves everyone else wrong.
BTW Verity, I would never have the hubris to say I could prove anything.
However, people here like to leap on data which supports their position, I think it is always helpful to point out the alterative explanations and positions.
That tends to be rare here and you need a relatively thick skin to be bothered.
As I’ve said, personal liberty mean a lot to me in a lot of very personal and real ways. But humans are not a solitary creature, we didn’t evolve that way, and that has to be factor in anything that is considered.
Dave – Wobbly Guy brought some good points to the discussion, and he is far from alone in holding some of the theories he mentions. Yet you avoided addressing a single one of his points.
You didn’t address any of my previous points, either, but, as always, trickled off on an inexplicable tangent. You never address an issue. You always choose a tiny part of the whole and devote your energy to disproving it.
Once again: Your treasurer father-in-law, a churchgoing man, had to deal with lots of dead bodies. And? This proves they died from AIDS rather than one of the many other wasting diseases that are common in Africa? Once again: it helps the agenda if all those death are marked AIDS.
Your wife’s boss in Ladysmith closed his business because the factory next door was crawling with AIDS. And the owner of the factory that employed 100% HIV infected people — did he, by any chance, make an offer on the vacated premises?
You say “even if we reduce the figures by a quarter…” We have no real evidence that the illness that infects the other 75% is AIDS. Haven’t you been reading? Are you seriously suggesting that the entire population, or even a large proportion, has been tested for AIDS? They are not bothering to test people. They are diagnosing them on the basis of how sick they look!
Read Wobby Guy again. Even one test is not enough. And these people aren’t even getting one test.
So based on all these misapprehensions, you go on to say, “I’d suspect it’s likely to be higher than that.” On what basis? Are you a scientist? Are you a statistician? Do you work in a blood bank? Do you understand what we are saying? I cannot speak for Wobbly Guy, obviously, but for myself, I am saying the figures are being fudged by a coalition of dishonesty within African governments, Western liberal/socialists and tranzis to extract more aid out of Western governments and pharmaceutical companies.
Verity,
This proves they died from AIDS rather than one of the many other wasting diseases that are common in Africa?
Yes, Durban and in particular Waterfall, is in ZwazuluNatal, and the period we are discussing even though during Aprtheid, *relatively* speaking rich. This is South Africa we’re talking about, not Ethiopia.
And the owner of the factory that employed 100% HIV infected people — did he, by any chance, make an offer on the vacated premises?
No, he shut his own business down. Apparently my wife went back a couple of years later and the entire business park was shutdown.
We have no real evidence that the illness that infects the other 75% is AIDS. Haven’t you been reading?
Yes, quite widely, except of course the raw data for which the URL is broken.
Googling on AIDS and Africa, I find little to support your position.
Going back to what is reported, Kenya has found they had over estimated the figures with AIDS, that still leaves a huge number they have confirmed have the disease.
Given sexual practises and other social factors, I don’t find that hard to believe.
On what basis?
I find little comfort in the Kenyan findings, except of course the situation isn’t as bad as estimated. Its still bad.
Are you a scientist? Are you a statistician?
An engineer by trade if you’re interested, with a basic grounding in statistics, although its not my strongest area. I still refer you to other sources.
Do you understand what we are saying?
Yes, and I think you are seizing on data which supports your position to the exception of other data.
I am saying the figures are being fudged by a coalition of dishonesty within African governments, Western liberal/socialists and tranzis to extract more aid out of Western governments and pharmaceutical companies.
And I am saying I don’t believe this to be the case and even with this finding the situation is still very very serious.
With respect to Wobbly Guy:
I’ll raise his concerns with a friend of mine who did a part of her Phd on the relationship between T cells and HIV – we havae discussed this a few years ago with respect to Thabo Mbeki’s view (which seems similar to Wobbly Guy’s) – she is a scientist and something of an expert in Virii.
At the time her response was pretty much unreportable, I’ll see if 3 years have changed her mind.
In short, I am aware of the contrary perspective, but I’ve not seen anything, nor spoken to anybody with the right science training to suggest it is correct.
Googling on AIDS and Africa. Precisely.
What is being discussed here is that the conventional wisdom on AIDS and Africa is being demolished. That no real statistics have been kept. A hundred million or so Africans have not been tested for AIDS. Tens of millions haven’t died, or are dying, from AIDS. There are a number of wasting diseases in Africa that we don’t see in the West. As you would expect, the effects look the same – i.e., the people get thinner and thinner and lose their appetite and die. In many, if not all, African countries, these deaths are being counted as deaths from AIDS because the AIDS industry is big business. It has also suited African governments and the liberal-socialist-tranzi alliance to make wildly inaccurate computer projections for the future.
The AIDS orphans do not exist in any significant numbers. It was all a shell game.
What is being discussed here is that the conventional wisdom on AIDS and Africa is being demolished.
Not really, in fact, reading a bunch of reports that cite the Kenya study, it doesn’t make pretty reading – it also highlights that just as the anti-natal estimation process used for the “high” figures, the Kenyan study is just as likely to produce a value in the low end of the expected sample.
I personally expect the truth is in the middle.
Your responses are interesting and remind me greatly of what Thabo Mbeki has been saying for years in South Africa, that AIDS is a western creation to scare black people and control them with their drugs.
Oddly, he’s now had to change his mind.
The AIDS orphans do not exist in any significant numbers. It was all a shell game.
Do you have a source of data for this statement?
I believe we are certainly looking at different data samples.
There are a number of wasting diseases in Africa that we don’t see in the West. As you would expect, the effects look the same – i.e., the people get thinner and thinner and lose their appetite and die.
While this could explain things in many African nations, do you seriously propose this is happening to the black population in South Africa?
If AIDS exists, as some dissidents have theorised, it’s a result of the atrocious living conditions rather some mythical virii we have arbitarily named HIV.
Shot immune systems can arise from a variety of circumstances. Repeated infections. Malnutrition. Drugs. Poor hygiene. Duesberg and the Perth group have said it time and again. And none of us are willing to take it beyond theory level because nobody wants to fund our research. Not the pharmaceuticals. Not the governments. Not the people, hoodwinked into falsehood.
In fact, there’s a theory that suggests that the so called HIV tests detect protein markers that indicate the onset of immune deficiency, which is why there is a certain level of correspondence between HIV tests and actual AIDS sufferers. The 10-20% accuracy instead of a complete random match.
So is there an AIDS epidemic? Perhaps. Nobody doubts that Africans are dying over there. They have been dying of war, malnutrition, native diseases, lack of hygiene for more than a century now. Does AIDS add anything to that? And does it mean we have to keep pumping in drugs which do nothing but to enrich the pharmaceutical companies, but do nothing to solve their problems of war, food, and shelter?
Mbeki was carrying it too far when he made the claim that it was all a Western conspiracy. It wasn’t. It was just an example of bureaucratic inertia that just wouldn’t stop. It was compounded by the gay factor and the politically correct movement.
Robert Gallo never sent his HIV theory to be reviewed by his peers; he went straight for the government agency the CDC to announce his findings. The virus theory made the special interest groups sit up and pay attention. It served all their needs, never mind if the theory had holes you could fly an aircraft carrier through.
I’m not looking at data, which has been tainted from day one, and which I don’t trust. I am looking at all the tens of millions of Africans who have never had so much as one AIDS test, yet whose deaths from TB, meningitis, pneumonias, encephalitis, infectious diarrhoea, sickle cell anaemia, rheumatic fever, and
pneumonia, cryptococcal meningitis – all wasting diseases – are recorded as AIDS deaths because it’s good for business.
I don’t know whether you purposely misunderstand the points of the many threads to which you contribute, but you always seem to come away from the main topic like a mudslide.
The point we are discussing is, the Africans, in cahoots with the Western AIDS mafia, have been lying about the incidence of AIDS on the continent – partly because, as someone said well above, the Dark Continent remains a dark mystery to most Westerners and we therefore accept anything anyone tells us about it and don’t question the need to siphon huge amounts of our tax dollars, pounds and euros into the coffers. I mean, the fight against ‘AIDS’ has taken on the aspect of a holy crusade, despite there being no certifiable evidence of an epidemic. It’s all press releases written by vested interests, and papers delivered by vested interests. With AIDS, it has ever been thus, since the disease was first identified 25 years ago.
It’s been easy for them to smuggle in the numbers.
It served all their needs, never mind if the theory had holes you could fly an aircraft carrier through.
I don’t know your medical background, but I have had discussions on this topic over the last decade or so with biologists and Doctors I know. I can’t agree, therefore, with your analysis of this. Sorry.
I suspect that all we could do is cite conflicting sources of data at each other and not convince the other party – I can only go by what people I know who’s opinion I respect and have the necessary technical qualifications inform me and what I see on the web.
I’m not looking at data, which has been tainted from day one, and which I don’t trust.
I don’t think this gives us any basis to continue a sensible discussion Verity.
Dave, as I said earlier, you always slide off the argument- perhaps it’s not even intentional. You write: “While this could explain things in many African nations, do you seriously propose this is happening to the black population in South Africa?”
Earth to Captain Dave: No. I don’t seriously propose anything about South Africa, about which I know nothing, and it would never enter my head to take an interest in the country. South Africa was introduced by you. I know nothing about it and have no interest in it, and that includes your father-in-law and your wife. We have been discussing the continent of Africa, not a tiny, fairly rich enclave in the south. Zambia, Zaire, Uganda, Zimbabwe, etc. The argument was never about S Africa. It wasn’t an issue until you, as always, deflected the thread by focusing on a micro-aspect and arguing that point.
If you have good TB numbers from before the AIDS period and TB deaths were being counted as AIDs deaths, you should have a marked decrease in TB deaths that are not explainable by the amount of treatment and prevention programs active in the population. There should be missing deaths showing up in the statistical numbers. If you have double counts where they die of TB and they’re ticked off in TB and AIDS columns, the death records shouldn’t match the totals for the individual causes of deaths when they are added up.
You can theorize that these other wasting diseases are being unjustifiably shifted over into the AIDS column but if that were the case it would show up in the data. Where is it?
Lutas: oh, no…it doesn’t work that way. AIDS doesn’t actually kill you, you know. It wrecks your immune system, and something else kills you. Like TB or malaria.
This means that interested statisticians can indulge in a little double-dipping, counting a single death as both an AIDS death and a TB death, if desired. So both curves can rise together.
No. I don’t seriously propose anything about South Africa, about which I know nothing, and it would never enter my head to take an interest in the country. South Africa was introduced by you.
Yes it was. For a reason: while your “wasting” disease explanation could apply in some parts of Africa, its unlikely to apply in RSA. If it doesn’t apply in RSA then I have trouble with your whole theory.
I know nothing about it and have no interest in it, and that includes your father-in-law and your wife.
So you have mentioned, data of any kind which contradicts your world view can be dismissed. Thank you for saying that so clearly.
We have been discussing the continent of Africa, not a tiny, fairly rich enclave in the south. Zambia, Zaire, Uganda, Zimbabwe, etc. The argument was never about S Africa. It wasn’t an issue until you, as always, deflected the thread by focusing on a micro-aspect and arguing that point.
And yet South Africa is an African country and it does have one of the largest AIDS problems. It also, thanks to a wealthy economy has more migrant workers from the entire continent than any other African nation, these do use prostitutes and do occasionally go home.
These things may not interest you Verity, but they do me.
David, i have to say i agree with what Tim Newman said a bit up in the comments section. Your prose is second only to Mark Steyn’s for me. This paragraph was particularly funny:
“I remember so clearly when AIDS became a big public health issue in Britain in the mid-80’s. From out of nowhere came legions of ‘experts’ to assure us that it really was the new ‘Black Death’ and it was poised to wipe out the civilised world. Resistance was futile. Most of us would be dead before breakfast.”
Thank you for helping me spill my drink all over the keyboard.
Dave – I veel say zees onlee wance – zee data were taintayed.
Verity,
If you insist. Sadly I don’t believe it was. But you can believe it if it makes you feel better.
Augh! “Apocalype”.
Why has no-one picked on this sentence?
The survey will dismay those who claim the West is ignoring a pandemic.
The survey suggests that the problem is not as big as we thought, which somehow manages to upset people. Oh my god less people are going to die how awful. I thought the whole point of all the anti aids work in Africa was to stop people dying. Maybe I’m just naive.
This summarizes the sickness of those who use others misfortune for their own political gain.
Jonathan: I’m with you. I too thought, what an odd use of the word “dismayed”. It reminds me of a previous Samizdata article (which I can’t find) about the left hoping things would go wrong in Iraq.
What nobody is denying is that people are dying of horrible diseases in Africa; nobody, either, is denying that there are masses of children orphaned by various horrible diseases. It looks to me like that’s what Dave is on about. What’s being argued is which disease it is. If the articles are correct (or, on the other hand, if Wobbly is correct, which would always be entertaining — get out your tinfoil hats!), sending oodles of money and medicine to combat AIDS (or, Wobbly, to cause it) really won’t help the people who are dying of something else.
Dave, nobody is arguing with you that your family members have not seen horrendously high numbers of deaths and sick people; nobody is arguing with you that nothing should be done. Why does it matter so much to you that they must all be classified as dying of AIDS?
nobody is arguing with you that nothing should be done.
Well, actually that is exactly the impression I’ve got from this discussion. After all, “the figures are being fudged by a coalition of dishonesty within African governments, Western liberal/socialists and tranzis to extract more aid out of Western governments and pharmaceutical companies.”
Why does it matter so much to you that they must all be classified as dying of AIDS?
I think “so much” is a bit of a reach.
I think it matters because the probability based on the data, this survey and lots of other factors is they are dying of AIDS related illnesses. I find the urge to blaim it all on some kind of conspiracy to be just a little odd.
Other disease factors *could* be at work in Africa. However, there is some Western stereotyping of the “dark continent” going on here by people who have never come closer to Africa than watching The Lion King.
The survey, as Jonathon points out, shows that the problem, at least in the central belt is not as bad as first thought. It doesn’t say that there isn’t a problem.
Omigod! There are people posting on this blog who went to see The Lion King? Ewwwwwww!
Hey! I watched the Lion King! Of course, I was still young then, not a bunch of old farts like you guys.
😛
The Wobbly Guy