Not so. Africa has the highest rate of population growth of any continent. See chart below:
Posted on 05/31/2003 7:46:46 AM PDT by JZoback
Every major campaign against AIDS in Africa has been based on the premise that heterosexual sex accounts for 90 percent of transmission in adults. Yet safe-sex efforts have not stopped the spread of the epidemic, which now affects 30 million people. Economic anthropologist David Gisselquist therefore suspected that HIV might be spreading primarily by another route. After analyzing 20 years of epidemiological studies, he and his colleagues concluded that unsafe injections, blood transfusions, and other medical procedures may account for most AIDS transmission in African adults. Their analysis indicates that no more than 35 percent of HIV in that population is spread through sex.
Gisselquist's interest in AIDS was stimulated by the guidance he received while traveling through Africa as a World Bank consultant. "They give you a syringe and say, 'Carry this with you, and avoid all the health care that you can.' We've been paying for third-world health care while advising ourselves to avoid it," he says. When he examined hundreds of papers on AIDS in Africa, he found evidence to back up those concerns. A study in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for instance, found that 39 percent of HIV-positive, vaccinated infants had uninfected mothers. In contrast, Gisselquist could not uncover any clear data proving that sexual intercourse dominates the spread of African AIDS. In Zimbabwe, HIV incidence rose by 12 percent per year during the 1990s, even as sexually transmitted diseases sank by 25 percent overall and condom use rose among high-risk groups. Gisselquist recently reported his findings in four papers published in the International Journal of STD & AIDS.
Medical researchers may have overemphasized sexual transmission of African AIDS in part because condom-use campaigns dovetail with their concerns about overpopulation, Gisselquist says. They also fear that people in Africa will lose faith in modern health care. Gisselquist urges new efforts to halt the spread of AIDS: "Aid programs need to push infection control in health care. And we need to give the public the advice and the tools for protecting themselves in medical situations," such as new syringes and single-dose vials.
Why Do So Many Africans Get AIDS?
The answer to that question was more or less answered about 15 years ago, and reported by The ECONOMIST, but apparantly lost in the 'noise'.
It has to do with the presence or absence of a specific 'binding site' involving the uptake of either Vitamin A or D, I've forgotten which.
This variant differs in different racial groups...Caucasians have it least, Africans, I believe, most, Asians...somewhere in between.
The upshot was that about 5% of Caucasians completely lacked this Genetic Marker, and could probably swing through South Beach or San Francisco NEVER picking up the infection, whereas Asians and Africans might get it from an Insect Bite.
It is little things like that which haven't been extensively studied which result in the variablity of the 'Condoms Only' approach.
Given the time of publication, i.e.15-20 years ago, and the corresponding lack of a widely accessable World Wide Web back then, this reference might be hard to find.
Has nothing to do with the vaccines themselves, it's re-using needles.
Yes. Unlike whole blood transfusions, which are handled one unit at a time, blood plasma goes into a vat with thousands of units. One diseased donor can contaminate the whole lot -- thousands of units. Then the vaccines, gamma globulin and Factor 8 made from the plasma are contaminated. That was the mechanism for the spread of AIDS and Hepatitis C from the tainted plasma from Cummins Prison Farm in Arkansas under Bill Clinton -- the Blood Trail story we've traced in this forum since 1998. We've followed that bad blood all over the world, including Africa. Everywhere it went, it caused Hepatitis and AIDS.
Peter Duesberg is full of it when he says that AIDS is not spread by a blood-borne virus.
Nope. To liberals, self-congratulation is more important than the cause.
First he makes valid points, even if he were wrong. Second, I trust the African statistics, politically correct activists and (on that matter) pharmaceutical industry even less.
Not so. Africa has the highest rate of population growth of any continent. See chart below:
I did use caution. I ordered his book Inventing the AIDS Virus and read it carefully. My opinion is that he makes very good points and even if he is mistaken with his guesses and alternative explanations (or he might be right), he is well within the honest and intelligent scientific debate while many of his detractors use personal attacks and non-scientific propaganda.
Science is not about being infallible - it is more about open inquiry and unlimited questioning. Duesberg is more than qualified to do that. He is also a better expert in his field than 99% of other virology specialists.
In his 1996 book he pointed to the toxicity of AZT (the main anti-AIDS medication) as the key souce of AIDS mortality. Then after 1996 the new methods were introduced - the cocktails in which amount of AZT was reduced and mortality went down.
"There is no magic in AZT, and there is no AZT in Magic."
The article hasn't even touched on my other concern regards false-positive results and overinflation of the actual number of persons dying of the disease.
1.) Some Africans will screw anything that walks, crawls, swims or flies.
2.) The UN changed the definition of AIDS in Africa, so that if you get pneumonia you are labeled HIV positive.
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