SubscribeWHO: No AIDS Pandemic For Heterosexuals
From the UK’s Independent:
The opening day of the 61st World Health Organisation (WHO) assembly on May 19, 2008 in Geneva.
Threat of world Aids pandemic among heterosexuals is over, report admits
A 25-year health campaign was misplaced outside the continent of Africa. But the disease still kills more than all wars and conflicts
By Jeremy Laurance
Sunday, 8 June 2008A quarter of a century after the outbreak of Aids, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has accepted that the threat of a global heterosexual pandemic has disappeared.
In the first official admission that the universal prevention strategy promoted by the major Aids organisations may have been misdirected, Kevin de Cock, the head of the WHO’s department of HIV/Aids said there will be no generalised epidemic of Aids in the heterosexual population outside Africa.
Dr De Cock, an epidemiologist who has spent much of his career leading the battle against the disease, said understanding of the threat posed by the virus had changed. Whereas once it was seen as a risk to populations everywhere, it was now recognised that, outside sub-Saharan Africa, it was confined to high-risk groups including men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and sex workers and their clients.
Dr De Cock said: “It is very unlikely there will be a heterosexual epidemic in other countries. Ten years ago a lot of people were saying there would be a generalised epidemic in Asia – China was the big worry with its huge population. That doesn’t look likely. But we have to be careful. As an epidemiologist it is better to describe what we can measure. There could be small outbreaks in some areas.”
In 2006, the Global Fund for HIV, Malaria and Tuberculosis, which provides 20 per cent of all funding for Aids, warned that Russia was on the cusp of a catastrophe. An estimated 1 per cent of the population was infected, mainly through injecting drug use, the same level of infection as in South Africa in 1991 where the prevalence of the infection has since risen to 25 per cent.
Dr De Cock said: “I think it is unlikely there will be extensive heterosexual spread in Russia. But clearly there will be some spread.” …
Aids organisations, including the WHO, UN Aids and the Global Fund, have come under attack for inflating estimates of the number of people infected, diverting funds from other health needs such as malaria, spending it on the wrong measures such as abstinence programmes rather than condoms, and failing to build up health systems.
Dr De Cock labelled these the “four malignant arguments” undermining support for the global campaign against Aids, which still faced formidable challenges, despite the receding threat of a generalised epidemic beyond Africa.
Any revision of the threat was liable to be seized on by those who rejected HIV as the cause of the disease, or who used the disease as a weapon to stigmatise high risk groups, he said…
Critics of the global Aids strategy complain that vast sums are being spent educating people about the disease who are not at risk, when a far bigger impact could be achieved by targeting high-risk groups and focusing on interventions known to work, such as circumcision, which cuts the risk of infection by 60 per cent, and reducing the number of sexual partners.
There were “elements of truth” in the criticism, Dr De Cock said. “You will not do much about Aids in London by spending the funds in schools. You need to go where transmission is occurring. It is true that countries have not always been good at that.” …
Un-real.
How many billions have been wasted on this “misplaced” campaign?
Not to mention the endless fear mongering.
Where is the outrage?
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13 Responses to “WHO: No AIDS Pandemic For Heterosexuals”
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June 9th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Dr De Cock, What a name…
June 9th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Political correctness trumps the truth more often than not.
June 9th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
……Dr De Cock, What a name…..
Really. That one wouldn’t pass muster even in an Austin Powers movie.
June 9th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
We’ll find a cure for AIDS just as soon as we can convince two white rats to screw each other in the ass.
This is a no-brainer for most of us. I’m tired of having my tax dollar pissed away on stupidity. (Oh yeah, Jeremiah Wright. If the US gave the AIDS virus to blacks to get rid of them, the plan has been a resounding flop. Maybe we should give it to every arab they we come into contact with, too.) It’s not that those people don’t know what spereads the disease. It’s that they just don’t care!
June 9th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
I would just like to emphasize here that WHO and UNAIDS are programs out of the United Nations and are dependent on nation members’ contributions. Enough said?
Approximately 10 years ago, the Centers for Disease Control, which funds most HIV prevention efforts, put a stop to funding the broad general population-based HIV prevention programs and began targeting groups specifically at-risk. That move was based on increasing evidence that HIV would not become pandemic among the heterosexual, non-IVDU community.
Here’s another article which fleshes out the original:
http://www.economist.com/scien.....d=11487365
June 9th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Dr. De Cock, blink blink, yup I read that right.
Wait till you all hear his patients names.
Phil MaCrakin.
Ben Dover.
Amanda Hugginkiss.
OK enough jokes, as bohemianwaxwing points out, this is a U.N. mess.
The biggest percentage of the population were never at risk, of those that were at risk were due so because of lifestyle choices, ( before some damn fool brings up newborn infants and transfusion patients and rape )
I am well aware that innocents have been infected.
My point is, if you wanna jab a needle full of Drain-O in your arm, or play Doctor with a member of the same sex, dont look to me for sympathy!
Aids may never be cured regardless of how much money is thrown around, viruses have been around far longer than the human race, And its a safe bet they will be around long after we are gone.
June 9th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
We were told constantly that AIDS was not just a disease that affects homosexuals -yet any politician who failed to give financial priority to AIDS research was automatically branded a “homophobe”.
You go to a cancer hospital and see little kids there, going through chemotherapy for a disease they never did anything to acquire -and some of those kids will die without ever having driven a car, gone on a date or done a million other things for the first time.
Yet, money that could -and should- have been used to try to eradicate that disease (or scores of others) has been squandered to appease the homosexual community and show how “tolerant” we are. As SG asks:
Where is the outrage ?
June 9th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
DOH!!!!!!!!!
June 9th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
I guess we need to give credit to the WHO for stating a simple fact.
When Greenpeace & the Sierra Club issue a joint statement declaring the threat from “Acid Rain” is over?
June 10th, 2008 at 4:29 am
In the late 1980’s I read the book And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts. It was a long, detailed description of the early days of AIDS in this country. I actually met the author at a book-signing. Sadly, he died of AIDS. His book contained plenty of criticism of the gay community, who wanted to blame everything but their own behavior (wildly promiscuous, anonymous sex) and fought against having the bathhouses closed. (They thought maybe the gov’t was contaminating their recreational drugs to make them sick, etc.). I recommend the book.
June 10th, 2008 at 9:40 am
And the government helped them in this delusion. To make sure that homosexuals weren’t ’stigmatized’, we played down the risk of real and serious threats to their lives. We just want ‘em to quit screwin’ each other in the butt–liberals are making them die.
If not embracing homosexuality means that Matthew Shepard’s blood is on our hands, then these bastards are coated like Carrie at the prom.
As far as I’m concerned, ‘gay rights advocates’ are about the same as someone who walks up to a man with OCD and tells him “Ain’t anything wrong with washing your hands 200 times a day; it doesn’t mean you have any problem. And if anybody tells you different, it’s because they want you to get sick and die.”
June 10th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Something else that pisses off liberals is that the financial assistance we are providing to Africa to combat AIDS includes an abstinence message. And its working.
The epidemic is ravaging Africa so badly because of their superstitions, refusal to be circumcised and insistence on “dry sex.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_sex
So education really is the answer- if you can get the right people to listen.
June 10th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
The studies which allegedly show a reduction in HIV among circumcised men are highly questionable. Not one of them was finished, despite the protective affect appearing to decline well below the oft-reported 65%, and several of the subjects disappeared. The fact that one study described circumcision as “comparable to a vaccine of high efficacy” seems to show clear bias. They appear to have been seeking a certain result. One has to wonder how many of the people promoting circumcision in Africa are themselves circumcised. Daniel Halperin is the grandson of a mohel, and seems to think that “maybe in some small way (he’s) destined to help pass along (circumcision)” so his objectivity is questionable.
Other epidemiological studies have shown no correlation between HIV and circumcision, but rather with the numbers of sex workers, or the prevalence of “dry sex”.
The two continents with the highest rates of AIDS are the same two continents with the highest rates of male circumcision. Rwanda has almost double the rate of HIV in circed men than intact men, yet they’ve just started a nationwide circumcision campaign. Other countries where circumcised men are *more* likely to be HIV+ are Cameroon, Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, and Tanzania. That’s six countries where men are more likely to be HIV+ if they’ve been circumcised. Something is very wrong here. These people aren’t interested in fighting HIV, but in promoting circumcision (or sometimes anything-but-condoms), and their actions will cost lives.
Circumcised male virgins are more likely to be HIV+ than intact male virgins, as the operation sometimes infects men. The latest news is that circumcised HIV+ men appear more likely to transmit the virus to women than intact HIV+ men (even after the healing period is over). Eight additional women appear to have been infected during that study, solely because their husbands were circumcised.
Female circumcision seems to protect against HIV too btw, but we wouldn’t investigate cutting off women’s labia, and then start promoting that.
For a good summary of the case against promoting circumcision in Africa, see this link:
http://www.doctorsopposingcirc.....ement.html