THE
CITIZEN S.A Leader Page
Aids, HIV
statistics must be
carefully examined
What is the evidence
that Aids is even
contagious or sexually
transmitted?
by Charles Geshekter
and David Rasnick
28th
Sept 2000
SINCE her public announcement that she
had been raped over 15 months ago, journalist Charlene Smith has emerged as
an outspoken critic of sexual violence in South Africa. While we vigorously
support her efforts to reduce the incidence of rape, Smith's attempts to tie
sexual behaviour to alleged HIV rates and Aids cases merit the closest scrutiny.
Smith consistently ignores the well-documented, multiple causes
of sickness in South Africa, makes projections about death and illness that
rely on numbers from nowhere, and resorts to racist insinuations about African
sexuality. Like many Aids activists, Smith offers unverifiable or misleading
statistics which few people question.
A prime example was a recent article in which Smith alleged that
in South Africa "two teachers are dying each week". She never explains whether
the "cause" of death was "Aids".
There are 182 000 teachers in South Africa, of whom 71% are Africans (129
220). Most of them range in age from 24 to 56. If the death rate among teachers
approximates that of the national average (say 1%), we would normally expect
1820 teachers to die each year. That amounts to thirty-five per week, not
just two.
The
classic symptoms of an "Aids" diagnosis are high fever, persistent cough,
diarrhoea and a 10 percent loss of body weight in two months.
Their causes are largely environmental and reflect impoverished living conditions.
As members of President Mbeki's Aids Advisory Panel, we have cited numerous
medical observations and scientific references attesting to this phenomenon.
For instance, of South Africa's total population of 42 million, about 8 million
people (95% of them Africans) have no access to running water and 21 million
people - half the population - have no sanitation.
About 27% of all Africans have piped water inside their dwellings compared
to 96% of white households. About 90% of white households have their garbage
and refuse removed once a week by local authorities; only 37% of African households
do.
Many Africans still face enormous hardships, six years after the first all-race
elections: they continue to endure deprivations as income disparities and
public health inequities remain remnants of apartheid-era policies.
Sex education should provide straightforward, honest information
about birth control and real venereal diseases such as syphilis, gonorrhea,
chlamydia and herpes simplex. These are fairly easy to diagnose; inexpensive,
effective treatments are available.
In
the same way, educators should tell the whole truth about HIV: that the tests
used to "detect" it are widely over-generalised and inaccurate, and that the
empirical data confirm how difficult it is to transmit. The public should
also hear the heartbreaking facts about people whose lives have been altered
or taken away (by suicide or murder) based solely on a flawed test for antibodies
to HIV.
The burden of proof remains on activists who insist that Aids
is a sexually transmitted "disease". Dr Nancy Padian and her pioneering research
colleagues at the University of California/San Francisco, after more than
a decade of investigation, were unable to document even one case of sexually
transmitted HIV, much less Aids.
Faced with the inability to verify cases of sexually transmitted HIV, Padian
et al were left to estimate that it might take 1000 sexual contacts with HTV
positive males for a woman to become HTV positive. Her calculation for men
is seven times as high.
If one applied Padian's estimates to South Africa, where UNAids alleges that
roughly 10 percent of the population is infected with HTV, then a typical
woman would need to have an average of 10 000 random heterosexual contacts
(and a man 70 000) in order to become HTV positive In American and South African
universities, condomless sex remains widespread, as middle-class, heterosexual
women rely on a variety of contraceptives. Despite the considerable amount
of sex that still goes on, the cases of HIV-positivity and actual Aids cases
remain microscopically small among college students.
Nevertheless, from Cape Town to Cape Cod, fearmongers imagine that terrifying
or shaming young people about sex will get them to forego one of the most
common, unstoppable acts that humans engage in.
In a similar way, there is no scientific motive behind demands
that President Mbeki state whether or not he "believes" HIV causes Aids. This
medieval puritanical approach now permeates all discussions about HIV (a molecular
biology term) and Aids (a set of common symptoms that indicate ill health).
The
two acronyms have been combined as HIV/Aids by orthodox believers, misleading
people to assume that they are indistinguishable. The two acronyms must be
uncoupled to recognise that correlation is not causation. Most people die
on a mattress. Does that mean mattresses are lethal? We have all watched the
sun "rise" in the east. Is that what really happens, scientifically?
As for the deceptively simple question, "does HIV cause Aids?" far better
questions are:
1. what is the evidence that Aids is even contagious or sexually
transmitted? and;
2. as Mbeki has asked, how can a single virus possibly cause
the plethora of historical diseases that now defines an Aids case in Africa?
As members of the President's Aids Advisory Panel we can confirm that our
mainstream colleagues were unable to answer these questions after two months
of requests to do so.
These are the questions that educators, scientists, officials and the public
should insist be debated.
Unless we marshal evidence to answer them, shrill non-scientists will prescribe
"cures" that are worse than the illness.
Professor Charles Geshekter teaches African History at California State University,
Chico. Dr David Rasnick is a visiting scientist at the Dept of Molecular &
Cell Biology University of California/Berkeley. Both are members of President
Mbeki's Aids Advisory Panel.
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