UN: World Losing Battle Against AIDS

Chicago Tribune ^

[ThePretender]

NEW YORK -- United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan on Thursday warned that the AIDS epidemic is accelerating on every continent and called for more money and leadership to halt its spread by the UN target date of 2015. In an opening address to representatives of 127 countries at a high-level conference, Annan said the scale of the global response to the scourge of AIDS has been significant but insufficient because "it has not matched the epidemic in scale." "Last year saw more new infections and more AIDS-related deaths than ever before," Annan said. "Indeed, HIV and AIDS expanded at an accelerating rate on every continent." Treatment and prevention efforts are insufficient, he said. "Only 12 percent of the people in need of antiretroviral therapies in low- and middle-income countries were receiving them. And while young people, especially young women, account for more than half of all new infections, most of the world's young people still lacked meaningful access to youth-oriented prevention services," he said.

[Mears]

We've all known for almost twenty years how to stop the spread of AIDS.

What the hell is wrong with these people?

[editor-surveyor]

Wow! like kofi anan really knows anything?

AIDS is mostly propaganda, but when people die, it is tuberculosis. This is a disease that we could easily beat, but it would not make any money for the pharmaceutical industry; the most effective medication for TB is a natural herb called Cat Claw (or pima de gato in Peru where it is a common weed).

[lilylangtree]

Yo Kofi, eliminate all those offshore bank accounts that you and your son have accumulated during the oil for food program. Then there'll be enough money for fighting AIDS. Besides, there are several Wall Street research companies trying to develop an antidote for AIDS.

[R.W.Ratikal]

Nope. The attempt by the criminals at the U. N. to divert attention away from the Oil-For-Food scam will not work. How long will Americans allow these Third World crooks to steal in every way they can?


It's time for the U. S. to leave the U. N. and the for the U. N. to leave America.

[Graybeard58]

We've all known for almost twenty years how to stop the spread of AIDS.

Yep.

The easiest and surest way to prevent it has always been there.

[CO Gal]

Amen, my friend. It's like losing the battle against sunburn. It's a COMPLETELY preventable disease and yet BILLIONS of dollars is spent on it. The only victim of this disease are babies born with it.

[VoiceOfBruck]

... to halt its spread by the UN target date of 2015

They want 10 years just to slow it down? I think their heart's not in it.

[Farmer Dean]

Or folks with unfaithful spouses.To the people who know how to keep their wedding vows,the aids epidemic is off the radar.

[austinmark]

THESE must be the U.N."freebie's". Nice Red Ribbon, STAPLED Right Through the package ! Those Pointy-Headed types at the U.N. must really know their stuff !

( /sarcasm )

[CO Gal]

You're right. The evil conservative in me didn't consider the all the innocent victims, but I believe the majority contract this disease with their eyes wide open.

[Longbow1969]

I've got an idea. All the people that care about this can contribute their own money to the UN's battle against HIV/AIDS.

In the meantime, I will allocate my own resources - whether it be time or money, to organizations I consider far more worthy. Somehow, I've the feeling that the incidents of HIV/AIDS amongst the populace/membership of the groups and organizations I support is low to nonexistant.

Longbow

[Dog Gone]

Everyone has AIDS!
AIDS AIDS AIDS!
AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS!
Everyone has AIDS!

And so this is the end of our story
And everyone is dead from AIDS
It took from me my best friend
My only true pal
My only bright star (he died of AIDS)

Well I'm gonna march on Washington
Lead the fight and charge the brigades
There's a hero inside of all of us
I'll make them see everyone has AIDS

My father (AIDS!)
My sister (AIDS!)
My uncle and my cousin and her best friend (AIDS AIDS AIDS!)
The gays and the straights
And the white and the spades

Everyone has AIDS!
My grandma and my dog 'ol blue (AIDS AIDS AIDS)
The pope has got it and so do you (AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS)
C'mon everybody we got quilting to do (AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS)
We gotta break down these baricades, everyone has
AIDS!

[Publius6961]

UN: World Losing Battle Against AIDS

The UN is a massive collection of morons.

Once the blood supply was controlled, I won my war against AIDS:

I did not become a pervert or a drug user.

Pretty simple actually.

[visualops]

ROFLMAO!!!!
Just watched that night.
Un-freeking-believable.
Quite possibly the crudest and funniest movie I've ever seen.

[Dog Gone]

I've seen it three times, and I'm not sure I'll ever tire of it. It's just too dang funny.

[Lunkhead_01]

Yeah, the formula is simple: Sit on your butt and keep your mouth shut!

[David Lane]

Why is HIV So Prevalent in Africa?

By Michael Fumento

Tech Central Station, April 15, 2005
Copyright 2005 Tech Central Station

---

Massive airdrops of condoms won't stop African AIDS.  Ninety-nine percent of AIDS and HIV cases in Africa come from sexual transmission, and virtually all is heterosexual. So says the World Health Organization, with other agencies toeing the line. Some massive condom airdrops accompanied by a persuasive propaganda campaign would practically make the epidemic vanish overnight. Or would it?

A determined renegade group of three scientists has fought for years – with little success – to get out the message that no more than a third of HIV transmission in Africa is from sexual intercourse and most of that is anal. By ignoring the real vectors, they say, we're sacrificing literally millions of people.

These men are no crackpots. John Potterat is author of 140 scholarly publications. He began working for the El Paso County, Colorado health department in 1972 and initiated the first U.S. partner-tracing program for AIDS/HIV.

Stuart Brody, who has just accepted a full professorship in Psychology at University of Paisley in Scotland, has published over 100 scholarly publications, including a book called "Sex at Risk." Economist and anthropologist David Gisselquist has almost 60 scholarly publications to his name and is currently advising the government of India on staunching its potentially explosive epidemic.

These renegades point out that a reason we know vaginal sex can't be the risk in Africa it's portrayed to be is that it hasn't been much of one risk in the U.S. Here 12 percent of AIDS cases are "attributed to" heterosexual transmission, meaning they claimed to have gotten it that way. Of these, over a third are males.

Yet San Francisco epidemiologist Nancy Padian evaluated 72 male partners of HIV-infected women over several years, during which time only one man was infected. Even in that case, there were "several instances of vaginal and penile bleeding during intercourse." So even the small U.S. heterosexual figure appears grossly exaggerated.

The chief reason it's so hard to spread HIV vaginally is that, as biopsies of vaginal and cervical tissue show, the virus is unable to penetrate or infect healthy vaginal or cervical tissue. Various sexually transmitted diseases allow vaginal HIV infection, but even those appear to increase the risk only by about 2-4 times.

So if vaginal intercourse can't explain the awful African epidemic, what can? Surely it's not homosexuality, since we've been told there is none in Africa. In fact, the practice has long been widespread.

For example, German anthropologist Kurt Falk reported in the 1920s that bisexuality was almost universal among the male populations of African tribes he studied. Medical records also show that African men who insist they're straighter than the proverbial arrow often suffer transmissible anorectal diseases.

Yet almost certainly greater – and more controllable – contributors to the African epidemic are "contaminated punctures from such sources as medical injections, dental injections, surgical procedures, drawing as well as injecting blood, and rehydration through IV tubes," says Brody.

You don't even need to go to a clinic to be injected with HIV: Almost two-thirds of 360 homes visited in sub-Saharan Africa had medical injection equipment that was apparently shared by family members. This, says Brody, can explain why both a husband and wife will be infected.

For those who care to look, there are many indicators that punctures play a huge role in the spread of disease. For example, during the 1990s HIV increased in Zimbabwe at approximately 12 percent annually, even as condom use increased and sexually transmitted infections rapidly fell.

Or consider that in a review of nine African studies, HIV prevalence in inpatient children ranged from 8.2% to 63% – as many as three times the prevalence in women who'd given birth. If the kids didn't get the virus from their mothers or from sex, whence its origin? Investigations of large clinical outbreaks in Russia, Romania, and Libya demonstrate HIV can be readily transmitted through pediatric health care.


Until we stop HIV spread through needles, we won't stop HIV spread in Africa.  Good people can differ on exactly how much of the HIV in Africa is spread vaginally – including our three renegades themselves. Nevertheless, their findings readily belie the official figures. AIDS studies in Africa, Potterat says, are "First World researchers doing second rate science in Third World countries."

There's no one reason for the mass deception. In part, once people have established any paradigm it becomes much easier to justify than challenge.

"These guys are wearing intellectual blinders," says Potterat. "Only a handful are even looking at routes other than sex. They have sex on the brain." Other reasons:

* Grant money goes to those who follow the dictates of the paradigm, not to those challenging it. "Sex is sexy," notes Potterat.
* There's fear that blame for the epidemic will fall on the medical profession.
* To the extent sex vaginal sex does play a role in spreading the disease, there's fear people will stop worrying about it.

Finally, says Brody, for researchers to concede they were wrong would be "to admit they're complicit in mass death. That's hard to admit that to yourself, much less to other people." Hard, yes. And too late for many. But not too late for millions more in Africa and other underdeveloped nations – if we act now.

http://www.fumento.com/disease/aids2005.html

[Farmer Dean]

You are so right-almost every one who has contacted this was engaged in risky behavior.I have heard of a couple of cases of unfaithful spouses infecting their mates.Pays to REALLY know the person you marry.

[The_Reader_David]

I guess you didn't read the other AIDS thread today.

The African epidemic is aided and abetted by the insistence on devoting all efforts to prevention of the sexual transmission of the disease. It appears that the main means of transmission in Africa is contaminated medical equipment (esp. shared home injection kits). Hetrosexual AIDS is primarily non-sexually transmitted and either iatrogenic or connected to IV drug use. (Epidemiological studies of prostitute deaths show in the West AIDS deaths among prostitutes are essentially confined to IV drug users.)