AIDS in Africa

February 28, 2003
Volume 6, Number 10
British Medical Journal Asserts Coverup in African AIDS Pandemic Claims AIDS Crisis Caused by Bad Medicine, Not Sex

A prominent British medical journal has published a series of articles claiming that the mainstream AIDS community seriously misinterprets data concerning the spread of AIDS in Africa because it is blinded by its pro-condom ideology. According to the authors of the papers, published in the International Journal of STD and AIDS, the majority of new AIDS cases in Africa are not caused by heterosexual activity, but by contaminated needles used for medical injections. Therefore, the massive distribution of condoms over the past twenty years, the keystone of the international community’s response to the African AIDS epidemic which continues to this day, is bound to be misguided and even counterproductive.

Most AIDS researchers hold that the African AIDS epidemic is overwhelmingly the result of heterosexual activity. The authors recount that, “In 1988, prominent organizations and experts circulated estimates attributing about 90% of HIV infections in African adults to heterosexual contact. Estimates have inched upwards since. According to the World Health Organization’s 2002 World Health Report, ‘current estimates suggest that more than 99% of HIV infections prevalent in Africa in 2001 are attributable to unsafe sex.” However, the authors contend that “we have been unable to locate any document – from the 1980s or later” to substantiate these claims. Instead, according to their data, up to 70% of HIV infections occur through health care transmission, most notably through the reuse of needles.

In the articles’ most stunning passages, the authors question the motives of researchers who disregard this data. “Why was evidence ignored? It has been said that people often see what they wish to see ... In short, tangential, opportunistic, and irrational considerations may have contributed to ignoring and misinterpreting epidemiological evidence.” Specifically, they suggest that the AIDS community may be influenced by a homosexual, population-control agenda. “First, it was in the interests of AIDS researchers in developed countries – where HIV seemed stubbornly confined to MSM [men who have sex with men] ... to present AIDS in Africa as a heterosexual epidemic ... Second there may have been an inclination to emphasize sexual transmission as an argument for condom promotion, coinciding with pre-existing programmes and efforts to curb Africa’s rapid population growth ...”

The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and the WHO quickly discounted these findings. IPPF flaty claims that the “new research findings...have been rejected by medical experts...”

The authors conclude that their studies should “... have major ramifications for current and future HIV control programmes in Africa,” and that “Africans deserve scientifically sound information on the epidemiological determinants of their calamitous AIDS epidemic.”

At this moment, the Bush administration is discussing how to allocate $15 billion for a new AIDS initiative in Africa and the Caribbean. Many of the international agencies and nongovernmental organizations involved in condom distribution and the “safe sex” campaign, such as IPPF, hope to receive a significant portion of these funds.