Aids could slash world population growth, warns UN

[dutchdemocrat]

HIV hitting young at rate of one every 14 seconds

Owen Bowcott
Thursday October 9, 2003
The Guardian

The spread of Aids among adolescents may significantly slow the growth of the world's population, a United Nations report warned yesterday.
About 6,000 youngsters become infected with the HIV virus every day, the equivalent of one every 14 seconds, according to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). The majority are female.

The world's population, currently 6.3 billion, is projected to rise to 8.9 billion by 2050. If Aids-related deaths in Africa, Asia and Latin America are not checked, that figure will be cut to about 7 billion.

The difficulty in estimating future population growth is complicated by the fact that half of all Aids infections occur among those aged between 15 and 24, the next generation of parents.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/aids/story/0,7369,1059035,00.html

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Good news for the Christian Aryan nations

Let's see ... the deaths of tens of millions of poor, gay, and dark skinned people, the possible emptying of the continent of Africa for re-colonization, the forceful reimposition of sexual "morality" ... mission accomplished, Mein Führer!

--bkl

[Muddleoftheroad]

4. Look

To a large extent Africa has brought this on itself by failing to recognize the root causes of AIDS. Yes, we need to do a lot more to help them now, but they are partially to blame.

[DulceDecorum]

19. The Scramble for Africa

is the root cause of AIDS.
The Africans are partly to blame for their current predicament,
as are the Native Americans,
becuase they did not instantly slaughter the strangers on their shores.

[Muddleoftheroad]

21. No, that overlooks current reality

Current reality has many African nations totally ignoring the real root causes for AIDS.

If you go back far enough in history, you can blame anything now on something then, but it doesn't make it so.

[knowledgeispower]

28. This is an interesting view

from a guy whose icon is MLK. Surely HE could have appreciated the lasting results that foreign destruction of an entire continent can have.

[Muddleoftheroad]

32. Read the earlier post

The UN should do more, much more for Africa.

But I am pissed as hell at moron leaders in Africa who won't accept reality that AIDS comes from drug contact or sexual contact. We still have people in Africa having sex with virgins to cure their disease for God's sake.

This is a worldwide health problem and the UN twiddles its collective thumbs. But Africa is not without responsibility.

[Dogmudgeon]

33. Blame Africa!

Did the African people colonize the south part of the continent with Dutch freebooters?

Did the African people install brutal military dictators who reduced their countries to abject poverty?

Did the Africa people cause the relocation millions of Africans to further the aims of Communism and non-Communist "Free Enterprise" alike?

Did the African people finance massive, bloody, generations-long civil wars and ethnic hatred?

Did the African people build huge, filthy cities to take up the slack?

Did the African people write American and European "Intellectual Property" laws that have been used to keep effective medicines out of economic reach?

Did the African people invite corporate concerns in to despoil large areas of the vast African heartland that caused enormous amounts disease to spread among the primates who were knocked out of their forest canopy homes?

Did the African people develop the idea of universal female sexual submission in every single tribal and national group (or was it Christian and Muslim missionaries)?

But some of the African people like to screw around. So it's their fault.

Sorry, the new religion of Infinite Personal Repsonsibility may soothe the consciences of corporate strivers, but it won't get the neo-colonialists off the hook for AIDS.

--bkl

[NickB79]

35. How does any of that relate to Muddle's point?

That many African leaders aren't even accepting the scientific fact that AIDS is caused by a virus spread by sexual contact and drug use? There was a court battle in S. Africa for several years that was finally won, wherein the S. African government was denying anti-HIV drugs to pregnant women because they didn't believe that HIV was even caused by a virus that could be transmitted from mother to child. Numerous babies were born HIV-positive because their government ignored basic science of the disease. Yes, the devastation caused by European colonialism has done immeasurable harm to the African people. And, I can see your point how all this turmoil made it much easier for the disease to spread rapidly in the population. However, we have to deal with what's happening NOW. Simply listing off the massive number of wrongs done to the African people does not solve the HIV crisis. We know what HIV is, how it's spread, and what we can do to stop the spread and treat the infected. The first step is to accept the science that shows it's a virally-transmitted disease, something that some African leaders still have not done. Until then, there is nothing anyone else can do to help if their own government won't help. With HIV, there is no cure; therefore you must focus on prevention.

[Dogmudgeon]

38. Africa

I'm sorry if I gave anyone the idea that it was an attack on Muddle.

You're right, we have to deal with what's going on right now. Listing off the damage done to Africa was rhetorical. But by assigning fault to Africans, we're only trying to comfort ourselves. Many people in America (and elsewhere) believe that the Africans are getting what they deserve for licentious behavior -- or for pseudoscience, which seems to evoke the same revulsion among the educated. In fact, an African can get AIDS much easier from screwing around precisely because of the decades of substandard health care, hunger, social stress and sex-role anxiety directly caused by colonialism, neo and otherwise. And without the ability to deal with any of these problems, owing to extreme poverty and hardship, pseudoscience is a sure bet.

Most "healthy" non-affluent Africans are already severely immunocompromised by the time they become interested in sex. In spite of AIDS, the main cause of death in Africa is from diarrhea caused by waterborne bacterial infections. These people generally can't even get kaolin or attapulgite, let alone antibiotics.

I also assume you're referring to Thabo Mbeki's rejection of the viral HIV model. Mbeki's attitude was formed by the painful recognition that Western medical experts diagnosed AIDS as requiring unattainably expensive Western medicine. A slap in the face like that will often trump science because facing a death sentence -- or genocide caused by microorganism -- is a far more irrational reality than any quack medical theory.

Science would also dictate making medicine widely and inexpensively available in hard-hit areas, to contain the disease and its vectors. Stragely, this (perversion of) "skepticism" only seems to apply when freaked-out poor people believe weird things.

You might be pleased to note that Mbeki, and many other African leaders, have changed their minds about HIV. I wish the drug companies would change their minds as easily about forgoing some of their profits to combat a major public health crisis. As of today, I believe that only one of the AIDS anti-virals (AZT) has been made available for less than $1 per dose, which is still too much for many poor AIDS patients.

And prevention is not going to be easy, because a lot of African men have bought into the idea that they have the right to use women as they see fit. This emotional transferance from man to woman is common in "impacted" populations where neither men nor women have much hope. Athol Fugard wrote a major play about it, Lena and Boesman.

Africa is a model for what the entire world can expect over the next few decades. Not only have we avoided confronting the immense human and environmental damage in Africa, we've continued to ignore the growing problems elsewhere in the world. The African ecosystem is much more sensitive to the world's ecosystem, but it is also much smaller. When the global ecosystem starts to react in full to the assaults we have made on it, AIDS will be the least of our problems.

I'm not just preaching gloom-and-doom. I still think we can clean up our messes and minimize the damage. But looking at the way Africa has fared, especially since the 1960s, do you think we really will?

--bkl

[Muddleoftheroad]

40. Again a question

You made many good points, but why should private drug firms foot the bill for a health crisis in Africa? Why doesn't the UN or the World Health Organization or somebody simply buy the drugs and work out the best deal possible?

If you were a stockholder in those companies, you might not feel this is a simple choice.

[NickB79]

27. HIV originated in Africa

THAT is the root cause of AIDS. It would have made no difference if the native people killed the colonialists that set foot on the African shores, because the HIV virus was not brought there by foreign powers. That, combined with local practices conducive to HIV spread ("dry sex", dislike of condoms by men, more acceptable use of prostitutes) and you have a recipe for disaster.

[DulceDecorum]

23. Too many black babies

are staying alive.

George Bush is a major voice in the eugenics movement and is surrounded by like-minded people –Boyden Gray (his legal advisor) and William Draper III (head of fundraising for his 1980 presidential campaign). Draper's grandfather had unsuccessfully urged eugenics policies on Eisenhower before convincing Johnson to adopt them. In 1969 Bush was involved in hearings into the 'dangers of too many black babies' and when he became ambassador to the UN in 1972 he arranged for the Association of Voluntary Surgical Contraception (formerly the Sterilisation League) to extend its policy of sterilising young children with 'low' IQ to non-white countries. This was further extended when Bush became president in 1988.

[ze_dscherman]

2. Population explosion

The headline is a bit strange, like it suggests that the slashing of population growth is a bad thing. To the contrary, the population explosion is one of the biggest problems mankind faces.

But of course young people dying of Aids should not be the cause of slashing population growth! Instead I hope that the increased use of condomes (due to Aids fear) will have an effect both on population growth and Aids prevention.

[Boomer]

17. So I'm not the only one...

... that found that headline rather twisted. More accurate to say: "Despite the spread of AIDS, world population growth is still spiraling out of control."

The ethical/moral/political dilemma of treating illnesses like AIDS and every other malady known to mankind is that the effort saves an individual but threatens the survival and quality of life for the teeming billions that are the end result of that compassion.

The draconian birth control measures of China are routinely condemned as human rights abuses, but golly gee whiz, how else do you get humans to stop breeding like vermin?

--Boomer

[Dogmudgeon]

39. Better living conditions

Living better automatically reduces population growth; people "breed like vermin" when they're treated like vermin.

I used to think it was cultural, but I'm beginning to think there is some physiological principle involved: When people live better and have a prospect for an improvement in their future, they don't have as many babies.

A massive die-off will reduce the population, but it won't improve the quality of anyone's life ... except for the self-appointed masters of humanity, the informal cabals of elitists of which George Bush is a member.

--bkl

[Lorien]

34. I thought the same thing

a DECREASE in population over the years would do far more for the survival of our species than an increase. However, the decrease should come from pregnancy prevention, education, and the empowerment of women worldwide.

[DoYouEverWonder]

3. Wouldn't allowing people access

to safe and affordable abortions be a lot more 'humane'?

[The Zanti Regent]

5. They got a right to suffer

(SARCASM MODE OFF)

There isn't a day that goes by that makes me despise religion more and more.

[DoYouEverWonder]

6. Organized religion

(IMHO) is the root of all evil.

As soon as people decided that god was something that existed outside of themselves, that god was separate and above them, then it was all downhill from there.

[revcarol]

7. Is anyone else thinking of Scrooge here?

After all, most are just those brown and poor people. Yukko, I can't believe I just wrote that, gotta take a shower.Yeah, some sickos will just rejoice, because this could never affect "their" nice moral, no sex before marriage kids.

[dutchdemocrat]

8. This is the kind of material that gets Freeperland

all frenzied and they do male bonding verbal group hugs. I should go post it over there just to prove a point. How sick they are.

[liberalmuse]

9. I was pretty much raised Mormon...

then fundie. As a Mormon, I was taught that the dark skinned people were cursed--that was the mark left on Caine by god as a punishment. Native Americans, too, because one of their ancestors wasn't 'righteous', and if they were converted, their skin would start to lighten up. This is what I was taught, but I think the Mormon church is trying to suppress these teachings this day and age.

People starved in Africa because they weren't as special as those of us here in the promised land (America). You see, when satan rebelled in heaven, 1/3 went with him, 1/3 fought hiim, and the undecided 1/3 are the people in the world dying of AIDS and hunger, you know, the poor people. Nice, huh? And Mormonism is more tame than fundamentalism. Of course I was taught it was wrong to be racist...Just one of the many reasons I despise religion. Oh yeah, my mom, an avid fundie, says she is against 'religion'. What do fundies mean by this?

[DuctapeFatwa]

10. Isn't that what it is intended to do?

I think they could remove "growth" from the sentence.

It will slash world population, mostly those segments considered less desirable by those who control the world's resources.

[demdave]

12. Intended by who? The denialist that run South Africa?

This subject, the rising tide of AIDS in Africa, has been discussed adamontly for well over a decade. The only people who don't think it is a problem are the denialists in Africa. People who think others are dying because of magic and witchcraft. People who refuse to believe the studies. People who refuse to believe in a link between HIV and AIDS. These are the people assisting in the spread of AIDS in Africa.

Do a google on AIDS Africa denial and read the history that is there. The stories easily go back to 1990.

[DuctapeFatwa]

20. How about those who think people are dying because of drug co greed?

Or those who deny that the west has been doing all it can to depopulate Africa ever since it found out there were natural resources there?

Those who control the lion's share of the world's resources make choices. Choices have consequences.

I am sorry I cannot be more optimistic about the chances for a political solution.

[Muddleoftheroad]

22. The UN should do more for Africa

But why should drug companies pay the bill? If the UN wants expensive medicines to treat AIDS (and it should), why not buy them? Work out a special agreement to build a factory in Africa to create the drugs, etc.

[DuctapeFatwa]

24. That argument is most convincing when made by a parent

who will ask the same question when they have an empty bank account and a suffering child.

[Muddleoftheroad]

26. Huh?

Sorry, too obscure for moi.

[Snow]

36. In the case of AIDS, as with most diseases,

primary prevention is a ton more effective and loads cheaper than treatment.

[reprobate]

11. To paraphrase from PNAC.....

...."biological weapons to target specific genotypes."

Sure seems to fit this situation. But then I'm paranoid when it comes to the neocons. There is absolutely nothing that they would not do to further their goal of world domination. In fact, wasn't population reduction one of their goals?

[knowledgeispower]

29. Do they REALLY say that?

That is fucking insane. Just a technical way of advocating genocide!

[loudnclear]

13. Isn't that why it was made by us in the first place?

No one wants to talk about the scientifically proven fact that the AIDS virus did not occur naturally in animals...it was created...bio-manufactured by western scientists.

[WindRavenX]

14. Are you sure about that?

I'm almost positive that AIDs occurs in monkeys and jumped to humans in the early 1930's.

[demdave]

15. scientifically proven fact ??

Of course you have links to published articles in peer reviewed publications to backup this claim. Right? I mean, otherwise you would just be blathering about something you know nothing about. I can't wait to read your links. Thanks.

[theEmpireNeverEnded]

16. okay, I'll bite...

I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's been "scientifically proven" however, it does appear that there are a few serious qualified scientists making the argument that AIDS is man-made. Foremost among them seem to be Dr. Alan R. Cantwell, Jr., and Dr. Leonard Horowitz. No, I haven't read their books and haven't looked too deeply into this issue, but I think their ideas are worth consideration. Does anyone have more information about these people and how credible their arguments are?

This is just a general review of their work:

AIDS AS A MAN-MADE PLAGUE:
The Resurrection of a Persistent Rumor


By Jack Nichols

http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/health/051297he.htm

[demdave]

18. I haven't read their books and haven't looked too deeply into this issue..

So by that standard, why should I care what you think. It obviously isn't important enough for you, the advocate, to read the books about the ideas you say I should consider.

I don't know if you are familiar with scientific peer review, so let me explain. Respected publications that carry works by real researchers are held to the standard of review by fellow researchers. That is how they keep the drivel from being published as fact, or even theory. You have to be able to reproduce your results, or backup you assertions with reproducable data. What you have linked to is an opinion article in Gaytoday...hardly impartial. But even in your article, the most quoted source is SCREW magazine. I fail to see where this is on par with established medical journals.


P.S. I never said you bite...:)

[Snow]

37. Try this site for a bit more on the manmade issue...

http://www.boydgraves.com/

it's still not proof positive in my opinion, but if someone like Peter Piot is truly holding that position, then I'm inclined to think there's something to it. I know Peter from when I was in grad school - he was there also - and he's the furthest thing from a tin-foil hatter you could imagine.

[knowledgeispower]

30. Tinfoil hat time once again

Could this be why being a biochemist seems to be so dangerous? A lot of those guys with government ties end up dying in pretty strange circumstances. Perhaps they know too much?

[NickB79]

25. Well, thats really odd for African wildlife

When you have monkey populations infected with SIV (simian version of HIV) and you have big cats infected with FIV (feline version of HIV). There are several potential viral ancestors of HIV already found in Africa. Seems immunologically-compromising viruses ARE found naturally in animals. A simple google search for either will give you plenty of hits.

Tissue samples preserved from several merchant marines from the 50's and 60's have tested positive for carrying the HIV virus. The samples were saved because the marines died of very unusual circumstances for the time, sypmtoms we know recognize as hallmarks of HIV/AIDS. Are you suggesting that the US had the ability to genetically engineer lethal viruses in the 1950's, 20 yrs before the techniques to do so were published in scientific journals? Or how about molecular analysis of the mutation rate of the virus which indicated the virus first jumped into the human population in Africa in the 1930's? Would you contend that the US had the ability to genetically engineer lethal viruses in the 1930's?

[lumpy]

31. "Aids and GW Bush could slash world population growth"

nt