Posted on 07/02/2002 11:25:30 AM PDT by flamefront
We know that AIDS ravages bodies. But can the disease topple governments?
Some experts fear the infectious epidemic that has already killed 22 million worldwide could also unseat leaders, change borders and threaten global security.
The theoretical trail of wreckage goes something like this: AIDS decimates military, police and peacekeeping forces, erodes social services and local institutions and incites internal unrest by eroding faith in government. Ultimately, the epidemic could leave power vacuums in hardest-hit countries, making nations vulnerable to aggressors and terrorists.
"If you simply sit back and watch these places become unhinged, particularly in weak states to begin with, there's no question you'll be inviting despair, extremism, and alienation from the rest of the world and particularly the United States," said J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
While sub-Saharan Africa is most vulnerable, the epidemic is soon expected to explode full-blown in Russia, India and China. In a worst-case scenario for international security, one of these "second wave" states would weaken, experts say.
"The consequences in terms of security in major nuclear powers has to be one of major concern," said Mark Schneider, senior vice president of the International Crisis Group.
The opportunistic potential for terrorists to jump into the political voids left by HIV/AIDS particularly concerns Western leaders. The United States government has cited the society-leveling potential of AIDS as a lure for terrorist cells seeking aimless, willing volunteers for their anti-Western ranks.
While experts say there is no evidence that terror networks like Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda are rising out of the ashes of AIDS-torn countries, the possibility is not being ignored.
Staggering Potential for Social Transformation
For now, the worst evils of AIDS have tormented the African continent. More than 28 million Africans are living with AIDS and in some countries, over 30 percent of the adult population is infected, according to the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS. In Botswana, for example, AIDS has cut the average life expectancy from 62 to 37 years of age.
Experts fear that such massive, unprecedented transformation in the hardest-hit countries, including most of sub-Saharan Africa, Haiti, Guyana, and Cambodia, could lead to government instability.
"The underlying conclusion is as the economic status deteriorates, and as the social sectors collapse, there could be the possible destabilization of governments," said Paul De Lay, director of the U.S. Agency for International Development's HIV office.
Countries where adult prevalency rates exceed 5 percent are particularly vulnerable, De Lay said. So far, Russia, China and India have not reached such infection rates.
"You're not going to see it happen right now in India. If the situation becomes worse, it's possible," he said. "In Africa, it's a reality."
Nonetheless, the predictions in sheer numbers for the second wave countries are staggering.
Some estimates predict that 5 million to 10 million teenage males in Russia will be infected five years from now. In China, 10 million people could carry HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, by the end of the decade. India already has the highest number of infected in absolute numbers of any country, even though the national infection rate is less than 1 percent.
Military, Police Forces Fall to AIDS
It may seem to stretch logic to begin with a public health crisis and end with a global security threat. But experts say anything is possible with this unprecedented pandemic.
Perhaps most directly, AIDS eats away at a nation's ability to defend itself by killing the forces dedicated to national security. When soldiers, police officers and international peacekeepers become infected in such large numbers that their capabilities are threatened, security is undermined.
Already, this phenomenon is taking place in Africa. Consider these damning statistics:
In Kenya, AIDS accounts for about three-quarters of the deaths among police.
Defense ministers in some African countries report HIV prevalence averages of 20 to 40 percent in their militaries. In Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the rates are as high as 50 to 60 percent.
So far in Africa, military forces suffer infection rates several times that of the general population. If this pattern continues, Russia, China, and India could find themselves with diminished military capacity. The Russian military already is gravely concerned about the rising rates of HIV infection among its troops.
Soldiers facing death sentences of AIDS can act recklessly, some say, potentially sparking conflicts. "There's nothing more dangerous than a soldier with a gun who already thinks he is going to die," said De Lay.
AIDS likely contributed in this fashion to the genocide in Rwanda during the 1990s, De Lay added. Although ethnic tensions were also blamed, the prevalence of HIV infection likely fueled the violence. Some Rwandan women reported being raped and told by the soldiers: "I just gave you the AIDS virus," according to De Lay.
Two Generations Destroyed
The AIDS epidemic also eats away at the economic and social stability of hard-hit nations, exacerbating vulnerability and potentially inciting internal unrest.
In Africa, the disease is blamed for rolling back decades of economic development. By 2020, more than a quarter of the work force in severely affected African countries will vanish, UNAIDS estimates.
Not only are families less able to support themselves — they also are disappearing. As adults vanish by the million, their children are being orphaned in disturbing numbers. More than 13 million children are without parents already in Africa, and that number is expected to more than triple by 2010, leaving 42 million orphans.
Exacerbating the problem, weakened health, education, welfare and justice programs prevent broken families and orphans from getting needed services.
"AIDS is destroying almost two generations of Africans," Schneider said. "When life expectancy drops by 20 years in some countries as a result of AIDS it has an enormous shock through society."
Experts say political turmoil could easily result, especially in weak states, if leaders do not get the epidemic in check.
South Africa, where an estimated 20 percent of adults are infected with HIV, has already experienced such unrest. The economic and health impact of HIV/AIDS has led to political splits in the African National Congress and raised the ire of citizens who believe their government has failed them.
Wanted: Money and Resolve
Despite the gloomy predictions, experts say it is still possible to rein in the AIDS epidemic and its potentially destabilizing consequences, especially in more secure countries such as Russia, China and India.
"Once there is the political will, there would be the capacity to respond," Schneider said. "You want to engender and help awaken and catalyze political will in these countries before the epidemic reaches a breakout point."
Countries such as Uganda, Senegal, Brazil and Thailand already have employed national resources to cut down on infection rates.
But such initiatives take political resolve and significant financial investment. So far, critics say the international community, with the United States at the helm, has yet to offer adequate support.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has requested a fund of up to $10 billion per year devoted to help pay for AIDS education and anti-retroviral AIDS drugs. Only 7 percent of that amount has been pledged so far.
If world leaders knew that AIDS could be stopped, perhaps they would be more likely to devote funds. "With proper intervention, we really can stem this. There would be a lot more enthusiasm for dedicating the resources that are necessary if people understood that," said Vivian Lowery Derryck, former USAID assistant administrator for Africa in the Clinton administration.
Will liberals like those in ABCnews NOW face up to treating AIDS as an epidemic and quarantine those cases? In their continuing political correctness probably not, though they should get serious.
Let's see ...
The nations whose governments are seriously at risk of being toppled as a result of this epidemic, are already under the control of aggressors and terrorists. The prospect of their trading in one set of aggressor/terrorist regimes for another, while their populations shrink dramatically, is hardly cause for alarm in the civilized world.
These and other facts are causing a growing number of scientists to question whether HIV even exists.
All you're seeing here is a media blitz by the CDC and WHO, trying to keep that golden goose laying its eggs.
As you said, it’s pretty hard to get all in a tizzy about AIDS anymore, no matter what ABC News tries to convince us. Trying to extrapolate how many people will have AIDS ten years from now is folly. Heck if the projections 15 years ago held, we’d all be dead. As it stands, I don’t know one person (personally) who has or has died of AIDS.
Owl_Eagle
”Guns Before Butter.”
Generations of kleptocracy, and centuries of tribal war had nothing to do with it. Nosiree.
The World Economic Conference first floated the "poverty breeds terrorism" line, patently untrue, but a ruse to rationalize "debt relief" payments to mostly European banks. Luckily that line didn't take hold, though I heard Powell, Clinton and others state it. Bono has been a bust too.
Right.
Money-making scam by AIDS interest groups - try to connect AIDS, an EASILY PREVENTABLE DISEASE, to global terrorism. Remember 5-6 years ago when these same groups tried to scare us by saying AIDS would spread in the heterosexual, non drug-addict population? Didn't happen. They have no credibility with me. If they want to save the Russians and Chinese from AIDS, let them knit quilts.
Harsh.
And of course, in time, quarantining millions would become impossible, so in the name of "national security" would threatend governments have any choice but to put the infected victims to sleep? For the security of the country?
Count yourself fortunate. It's a horrible death. I watched a handsome young man die from it - I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
|
THE AFRICAN AIDS EPIDEMIC: From Peter Duesberg to the AIDS panel, 6/22/00 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
An infectious epidemic is typically diagnosed by scientists and non-scientists by a sudden increase in morbidity and mortality of a population. As a result the affected population declines significantly, and a relatively immune population emerges. The most readable modern description of such an epidemic is Albert Camus' "The Plague". Roy Anderson, professor of zoology at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases in Oxford, UK, provides a recent scientific description in a piece entitled "The spread of HIV and sexual mixing patterns" (Anderson, 1996). According to Anderson, "The historical and epidemiological literature abounds with accounts of infectious diseases invading human communities and of their impact on social organization and historical events. We typically think of a new epidemic in a "virgin" population as something that arises suddenly, sweeps through the population in a few months, and then wanes and disappears. Indeed, the classical epidemic curve for many respiratory or intestinal tract viral and bacterial infections is bell-shaped, with an overall duration of a few months to a year or so. Figure 4-1 illustrates a well-documented example, the 1665 plague in London, believed to have killed about one-third of the population in a few months." The seasonal poliomyelitis epidemics from the days prior to the polio vaccine, and the ever new, seasonal flu epidemics are specific modern examples of viral epidemics. All of these viral and microbial epidemics have the following in common:
By contrast, the following are characteristics of diseases caused by non-contagious, chemical or physical factors:
For example, the American pellagra epidemic of the rural South in the early decades of the 20th century lasted for decades and no immunity emerged, until a vitamin B rich diet proved to be the cure. And it did not spread to the industrial North which had a diet rich in Likewise the American and European AIDS epidemics:
AIDS manifests in a bewildering spectrum of 30 non-specific, heterogeneous diseases. The above summary indicates that American and European AIDS epidemics exhibit the characteristics of diseases caused by non-contagious, chemical or physical factors NOT viruses. A F R I C A N A I D S AFRICAN AIDS IN NUMBERS Now I will briefly analyze how African AIDS measures up with "the historical and epidemiological literature" described by Anderson and others (Fenner et al.,1974). My analysis is based on statistical numbers from the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, the United Nations and the U.S. Agency for International Development & the U.S. Census Bureau (USAID). According to the WHO's Weekly Epidemiological Records, Based on the last available data from South Africa, 8,976 cases were reported there between 1994 and 1996 by the WHO, corresponding to about 4,500 cases per year (WHO's Weekly Epidemiological Records 1998 and 1995). However, it is evident from the WHO data that the African AIDS epidemic is not following the bell-shaped curve of an exponential rise and subsequent sharp drop with immunity, that are typical of infectious epidemics. Instead it drags on like a nutritionally or environmentally caused disease (Seligmann et al., 1984), that steadily affects, what appears to be only a very small percentage of the African population. Given a current African population of 616 million (United Nations Environment Programme, June 15, 2000), and an average of 75,000 African AIDS cases per year, it follows that only 0.012% of the African population is annually suffering or dying from AIDS. Likewise only 0.01% of the South African population was suffering from AIDS between 1994 and 1996, based on the 4,500 annual cases and a population of approximately 44 million (US Agency for International Development, "HIV/AIDS in the developing World", May 1999). This means that the new African AIDS epidemic only represents a very small fraction of normal African mortality. Based on a current average life expectancy for Africa of about 50 years (US Agency for International Development, "HIV/AIDS in the developing World", May 1999), the annual mortality of 616 million people is 12.3 million. Thus even if we assume that all AIDS cases reported by the WHO are deaths, the African AIDS epidemic represents only 75,000 out of 12,300,000 deaths per year, or 0.6% of all African mortality. Thus African AIDS is certainly not one of the historical microbial epidemics described by Camus and Anderson (see above). Since no immunity has emerged in over a decade, the restriction of African AIDS to a relatively small fraction of the large reservoir of susceptible people indicates non-contagious risk factors that are limited to certain subsets of the African population. In view of the very small share (0.6%) that the African AIDS epidemic seems to hold on Africa's total mortality, the question arises whether the mortality claimed for AIDS is in fact new mortality, that can be distinguished from conventional mortality, or whether it is a minor fraction of conventional mortality under a new name.
According to the WHO's Bangui definition of AIDS (Widy-Wirski et al., 1988; Fiala, 1998) and the "Anonymous AIDS Notification" forms of the South African Department of Health, African AIDS is not a specific clinical disease, but a battery of previously known and thus totally unspecific diseases, for example:
Since these diseases include the most common diseases in Africa and in much of the rest of the world, it is impossible to distinguish clinically African AIDS diseases from previously known, and concurrently diagnosed, conventional African diseases. Thus African AIDS is clinically unspecific, unlike microbial diseases, but just like some nutritionally and chemically caused diseases (see above). AFRICAN AIDS IS TOO SMALL TO BE DETECTED STATISTICALLY AGAINST THE BACKGROUND OF NORMAL AFRICAN MORBIDITY, MORTALITY AND GROWTH RATES We have already pointed out that it is almost impossible to be certain about the existence of a new African AIDS epidemic that claims only 0.6% of African mortality, particularly since all AIDS defining diseases are profoundly conventional African diseases. The same is true if we try to determine the effect of the presumably new African AIDS epidemic on the current growth rates of Africa. The annual population growth rates of Africa have been between 2.4 and 2.8% per year since 1960 based on the American Agency for International Development & the U.S. Census Bureau's "HIV/AIDS in the Developing World" (U.S. Agency for International Development & U.S. Census Bureau, Feb. & May 1999) and the United Nations' "African population Database Documentation" (United Nations Environment Programme, June 15, 2000). As a result of the high African growth rates, the population of the whole African continent has grown from 274 million in 1960, to 356 million in 1970, to 469 million in 1980, and to 616 million in 1990 (United Nations Environment Programme, June 15, 2000). By comparison the annual growth rate of the US is only 1% and that of Europe is only 0.5% (USAID, Feb. & May 1999). Because of the numerical discrepancy between the relatively high African growth rates (2.4 to 2.8%) and the small annual deficits of these growth rates to be expected from AIDS mortality (0.6%), an African AIDS epidemic can not be identified or confirmed based on its effect on the high African growth rates. In view of this, and the complete overlap between the complex battery of diseases that define the AIDS epidemic and their conventional counterparts, it appears that the presumably new AIDS epidemic can be neither distinguished epidemiologically nor clinically from conventional African diseases and mortality. DECEPTIVE REPORTING OBSCURES ANALYSIS OF AFRICAN AIDS To all of us who have been subjected to the American AIDS rhetoric, and indeed the rhetoric of our first meeting in Pretoria last May, about the "catastrophic dimensions" of African AIDS (Washington Post, April 30, 2000), the healthy African growth rates come as a big surprise. Take as an example of this rhetoric President Clinton's recent designation of AIDS as a "threat to US national security ... spurred by US intelligence reports that looked at the pandemic's broadest consequences, ... particularly Africa ... [and] projected that a quarter of southern Africa's population is likely to die of AIDS ..." (Washington Post, April 30, 2000). In view of this rhetoric, it would appear that neither President Clinton nor the "U.S. intelligence" are aware of information available to the American Agency for International Development & the U.S. Census Bureau. Indeed the USAID & Census Bureau seem to have noticed the discrepancy between the facts and the rhetoric and are trying to hide it - the possible reason why "the largest demographic impact of AIDS" is cautiously described either as just a relatively small reduction in "life expectancy" or in expected population growth (not loss!): "Differences in population size between the AIDS-adjusted and the non-adjusted scenarios are often substantial ... By the year 2010 ... South Africa will have 5.6 million fewer people ..." than expected based on current growth rates ("HIV/AIDS in the Developing World", U.S. Agency for International Development & U.S. Census Bureau, May 1999). A "catastrophe" 10 years down the road - and a "threat to U.S. national Security" now! The alarming tone of WHO's joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, "AIDS epidemic update: December 1999" (UNAIDS December 1999), announcing that Africa had gained 23 million "living with HIV/AIDS", because they are "estimated" carriers of antibodies against HIV, since the "early 80s" (WHO, Weekly Epidemiological Record 73, 373-380, 1998) is equally surprising in view of information available to the agency. Neither the WHO nor the United Nations point out that Africa had gained 147 million people during the same time in which the continent was said to suffer from a new AIDS epidemic. Likewise, South Africa has grown from 17 million to 37 million in 1990 (United Nations Environment Programme, June 15, 2000), and to 44 million now ("HIV/AIDS in the Developing World", U.S. Agency for International Development & U.S. Census Bureau, May 1999). In the last decade South Africa has also gained 4 million HIV-positive people (A. Kinghorn & M. Steinberg, South African Department of Health, undated document probably from 1998, provided at the Pretoria meeting). Thus South Africa has gained 4 million HIV-positives during the same decade in which it grew by 7 million people. Moreover, although the 23 million "estimated" HIV-antibody positives are said to be "living with HIV/AIDS" by the WHO, the agency does not offer any evidence for morbidity or mortality exceeding the modest numbers, ie. about 75,000 cases annually, reported by the it's Weekly Epidemiological Records (see above). It would follow that the estimated increases in African HIV antibody (!)-positives do not correlate with decreases in any African population. On the contrary, they correlate with unprecedented simultaneous increases in the country's populations - hardly the "catastrophe" imagined by the Washington Post and propagated by the WHO and the American AIDS establishment. But this deceptive AIDS propaganda biases a scientific analysis of African AIDS by all those who are not aware of the facts.
(1) The African AIDS epidemic fails all criteria of a microbial or viral epidemic: (i) It is steady, i.e. about 75,000 cases per year since the early 1990s, instead of growing exponentially into the large reservoir of 617 million susceptible people, as would be typical of a new viral or microbial epidemic; (ii) It is not self-limiting via immunity within weeks or months, as is typical of a microbial and particularly of a viral disease. Instead it appears to maintain for years a rather steady share of African morbidity and mortality. (iii) It is clinically exceedingly heterogeneous totally lacking any specificity of its own, unlike all conventional viral and even bacterial diseases. In conclusion, the African AIDS epidemic does not have even one of the specific characters of a viral or microbial epidemic. (2) Since the suspected African AIDS epidemic of an average of 75,000 annual cases can neither be identified as a new epidemic (i) clinically because of its total lack of a clinical identity, nor (ii) numerically because of its small share of the total African morbidity and because of undetectable effects on the rapid growth of the African population, the primary scientific task of our AIDS panel will now be to determine whether there is in fact a new epidemic of AIDS defining diseases in Africa, or whether a fraction normal morbidity and mortality has been renamed AIDS. The answer to this question would be the first order of business for all AIDS prevention and treatment programs considered by President Mbeki. To find this answer, I second the proposal from an African AIDS researcher published 13 years ago, "Clinical epidemiology, not [HIV] seroepidemiology, is the answer to Africa's AIDS problem" (Konotey-Ahulu, 1987). (3) The African statistics of AIDS and HIV antibody-positives confirm Mbeki's suspicion about discrepancies between the African and American AIDS epidemics (Mbeki's letter to U.S. President Clinton, Washington Post, April 19, 2000): In Africa 23 million HIV-positives generate per year 75,000 AIDS patients, ie. 1 AIDS case per 300 HIV-positives. But in the US, 0.9 million HIV-positives (WHO, Weekly Epidemiological Record 73, 373-380, 1998) now generate per year about 45,000 AIDS cases (Centers for Disease Control, 1999), ie. 1 AIDS case per 20 HIV-positives. Thus the AIDS risk of an American HIV-positive is about 15-times higher than that of an African! Since over 150,000 healthy (!) HIV-positive Americans are currently treated with DNA chain-terminating and other anti-HIV drugs (Duesberg & Rasnick, 1998), and since American HIV-positives have a 15-fold higher AIDS risk than African HIV-positives, President Mbeki must be warned about American advice on "treatments" of HIV-positives. (4) The discrepancies between African AIDS and infectious disease, and the discrepancies between the high AIDS risk of American compared to African HIV-positives can both be readily explained by the hypothesis that AIDS is caused by non-contagious risk factors and that HIV is a harmless passenger virus (Duesberg, 1996; Duesberg & Rasnick, 1998). According to this hypothesis the African AIDS diseases are generated by their conventional, widespread causes, malnutrition, parasitic infections and poor sanitation as originally proposed by leading AIDS researchers including Fauci, Seligmann et al. (Seligmann et al., 1984). This hypothesis also offers a simple explanation for the "heterosexual" distribution of AIDS in the African people, a question also asked by Mbeki in his letter to President Clinton (see above). Malnutrition, parasitic infections and poor sanitation do not discriminate between sexes. By contrast, American AIDS would be caused by recreational drugs consumed by millions and anti-HIV drugs prescribed to about 200,000 including 150,000 still healthy HIV-positives (Duesberg & Rasnick, 1998). The non-random, 85%-male epidemiology of American AIDS reflects the male prerogative on hard recreational drugs (heroin, cocaine) and the wide-spread use of drugs as male homosexual stimulants (Haverkos & Dougherty, 1988; Duesberg & Rasnick, 1998). In the light of this hypothesis the new epidemic of HIV-antibodies would simply reflect a new epidemic of HIV-antibody testing, introduced and inspired by new American biotechnology. This technology was developed during the last 20 years for basic research to detect the equivalents of biological needles in a haystack, but not to "detect" the massive invasions of viruses that are necessary to cause ALL conventional viral diseases (Duesberg, 1992; Duesberg & Schwartz, 1992; Duesberg, 1996; Mullis, 1996; Duesberg & Rasnick, 1998; Mullis, 1998). But this technology is now faithfully but inappropriately used by thousands of AIDS virus researchers and activists to detect latent, ie. biochemically and biologically inactive HIV or even just antibodies against it (Duesberg & Bialy, 1996)! The same technology also provides job security for other virologists and doctors searching for latent, and thus biologically inactive, viruses as their preferred causes of Kaposi's sarcoma, cervical cancer, leukemia, liver cancer, and rare neurological diseases - without ever producing any public health benefits (Duesberg & Schwartz, 1992). (5) President Mbeki must also be warned about Dr. Joe Sonnabend's answer to the president's question about the epidemiological discrepancy between the "heterosexual" AIDS epidemic in Africa and the non-random, 85%- male epidemic in the U.S. (Mbeki's letter to U.S. President Clinton, Washington Post, April 19, 2000). According to Sonnabend's hypothesis, Africans acquire HIV heterosexually, because they simultaneously suffer from a long list of diseases, including "tuberculosis, malaria, other protozoal infections, bacterial diarrheal infections, pneumonia, plasmodium, Leishmania" etc. However, the very low AIDS risk of an African HIV-positive, compared to an American, calls this hypothesis into question. If the Sonnabend-hypothesis were correct, African HIV-positives should develop AIDS much more readily than their American counterparts. But the opposite is true. In fact according to Sonnabend most Africans should already have AIDS by the time they pick up HIV "heterosexually". Moreover, the Sonnabend-hypothesis does not resolve the discrepancy between relatively high share of children from 0-14 years in African AIDS, ie. 7%, compared to the 1% share of AIDS by their American counterparts (WHO, Weekly Epidemiological Record, vol. 49, pp381-384, 4 December 1998). According to the WHO, "AIDS in children is an important phenomenon in many African countries, whereas it is relatively rare in industrialized countries." Again AIDS in children is not compatible with "heterosexual transmission of HIV" while suffering from Sonnabend's bewildering list of diseases. But AIDS in children is very compatible with malnutrition, parasitic infection and poor sanitation. Therefore, President Mbeki must be warned against treatment of these children with DNA chain-terminators and other anti-HIV drugs as suggested by Sonnabend's hypothesis.
Acknowledgment: I thank Charles Geshekter, professor of history, Cal State University Chico, Chico, California for advice and critical statistics (see the Geshekter posts on this panel). References: Anderson, R. M., (1996): The spread of HIV and sexual mixing patterns. In: AIDS in the World II, pp. 71, J. E. Mann & D. J. M. Tarantola (eds.). Oxford Univ. press. Oxford. |
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.