HIV/AIDS and the Struggle for the Humanisation of the African

"And Conrad’s stand-in, Marlow, (in Heart of Darkness), muses on how "the conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much."
(King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild, Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, 1998.)

"All the human race loves a lord – that is, it loves to look upon or to be noticed by the possessor of Power or Conspicuousness; and sometimes animals, born to better things and higher ideals, descend to man’s level in this matter. In the Jardin des Plantes I have seen a cat that was so vain of being the personal friend of an elephant that I was ashamed of her."
(Does the Race of Man love a Lord?, by Mark Twain, April 1902: Mark Twain, The Library of America, 1976.)

"The failure of American AIDS to ‘explode’ into the general population led the authorities to look for the phenomenon elsewhere. New AIDS cases in the U.S. began falling before the introduction of ‘protease inhibitor’ therapy, and from 1997 to 1998 dropped from about 60, 000 to 48, 000. Of teenagers diagnosed in 1998, only 68 were classified as ‘heterosexual contact.’ Among women, AIDS diagnoses fell from 13, 000 in 1997 to 11, 000 in 1998… If the very high AIDS spending by the U.S. government is to be sustained, the emergency would have to be drummed up elsewhere… so Africa beckoned."
(Inventing an Epidemic, The American Spectator, 2000, by Tom Bethell, Washington Editor.)

"In money terms, first there is the pharmaceutical industry. If AIDS in Africa is now a national security threat, as President Clinton has declared, American money will be appropriated for the very expensive drugs to spend in Africa – billions of dollars of potential profits. If Washington doesn’t appropriate funds, there’s the fear that African nations might buy generic, foreign-made copies of U.S. drugs. Then there is the public health establishment. More billions can go for salaries, offices, staffing, travel and long reports. The World Health Organisation budget has skyrocketed along with African AIDS statistics. Many public health officials are well meaning, seeing AIDS fears as the only way to get money to help the misery afflicting so much of Africa. In America, government AIDS money is spreading far and wide. Federal spending now tops $10 billion and is increasing yearly even as case loads fall."
(AIDS Hype in Africa? No HIV Test Required, Disease Defined Differently Than in U.S., by Jon Basil Utley, Robert A. Taft Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, USA, April 30, 2000.)

"Africa Can’t Just Take a Pill for AIDS"; New York Times (www.nytimes.com) (07/06/00) P. A27; Goldyn, Lawrence.

"Lawrence Goldyn, a doctor who treats HIV-positive patients, writes in an editorial that South African President Thabo Mbeki has frustrated AIDS researchers with his decision not to promote the use of the drug AZT and his consideration that HIV may not cause AIDS. However, in the light of the country’s poor infrastructure, these decisions are rational. South Africa lacks the resources and pharmaceuticals to treat its growing HIV-infected population. Cocktail drugs cost up to $15,000 a year, not affordable for most, and unavailable without the social, economic, and medical structures needed to administer drug therapies. The complicated treatments for HIV require full adherence and stability, and getting South Africans to follow a drug schedule could be impossible, based on the past failure of tuberculosis treatments. Transmission of HIV to newborns is also an issue, but in a country where breast-feeding is the only option, the infection rate is 30 per cent for infants born to an infected mother. The best solution is an AIDS vaccine, but without research funds that turn profits, it is years away. Mbeki is right to say that the Western way of fighting AIDS will not transfer to Africa."
Current TB News: Week of July 10, 2000: Johns Hopkins Center for Tuberculosis Research.

"As my journey through the pharmaceutical jungle progressed, (in which a number of people were murdered, others killed with experimental drugs, and governments and universities corrupted), I came to realise that, by comparison with the reality, my story was as tame as a holiday postcard."
"The Constant Gardener" by John le Carre. (Author’s Note): Coronet Books, Hodder and Stoughton, London. 2001.

As the 19th century came to a close, in 1900, the great pan-Africanist, W.E.B. du Bois, said that the problem of the 20th century was the problem of the colour line. During the last year of this 20th century, 2000, our President, Thabo Mbeki, was asked to open the Durban 13th International AIDS Conference, which he did.

On reporting this event, the media said that hundreds of delegates walked out of this opening session both because of what the President said and what he did not say. Let us quote what he said.

"Let me tell you a story that the World Health Organisation told the world in 1995. I will tell this story in the words used by the World Health Organisation.

"This is the story: The world’s biggest killer and the greatest cause of ill-health and suffering across the globe is listed almost at the end of the International Classification of Diseases. It is given the code Z59.5 - extreme poverty.

"Poverty is the main reason why babies are not vaccinated, why clean water and sanitation are not provided, why curative drugs and other treatments are unavailable and why mothers die in childbirth. It is the underlying cause of reduced life expectancy, handicap, disability and starvation. Poverty is a major contributor to mental illness, stress, suicide, family disintegration and substance abuse. Every year in the developing world 12.2 million children under 5 years die, most of them from causes which could be prevented for just a few US cents per child. They die largely because of world indifference, but most of all they die because they are poor.

"Beneath the heartening facts about decreased mortality and increasing life expectancy, and many other undoubted health advances, lie unacceptable disparities in wealth. The gaps between rich and poor, between one population group and another, between ages and between sexes, are widening. For most people in the world today every step of life, from infancy to old age, is taken under the twin shadows of poverty and inequity, and under the double burden of suffering and disease.

"For many, the prospect of longer life may seem more like a punishment than a gift. Yet by the end of the century we could be living in a world without poliomyelitis, a world without new cases of leprosy, a world without deaths from neonatal tetanus and measles. But today the money that some developing countries have to spend per person on health care over an entire year is just US $4, less than the amount of small change carried in the pockets and purses of many people in the developed countries.

"A person in one of the least developed countries in the world has a life expectancy of 43 years according to 1993 calculations. A person in one of the most developed countries has a life expectancy of 78, a difference of more than a third of a century. This means a rich, healthy man can live twice as long as a poor, sick man…

"In many countries in the developing world, up to two-thirds of all new infections are among people aged 15-24. Overall it is estimated that half the global HIV infections have been in people under 25 years with 60% of infections of females occurring by the age of 20. Thus the hopes and lives of a generation, the breadwinners, providers and parents of the future, are in jeopardy."

Because he said all these things, it was said that hundreds of delegates walked out on President Mbeki!

They also walked out because there were two things he did not say. One of these was that he did not say that HIV causes AIDS! The other was that he did not say that HIV/AIDS is the single greatest threat to the survival of the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa!

"The world’s biggest killer and the greatest cause of ill health and suffering across the globe, including South Africa, is extreme poverty.

"Is there more that all of us should do together, assuming that in a world driven by a value system based on financial profit and individual material reward, the notion of human solidarity remains a valid precept governing human behaviour! On behalf of our government and people, I wish the 13th International AIDS Conference success, confident that you have come to these African shores as messengers of hope and hopeful that when you conclude your important work, we, as Africans, will be able to say that you who came to this city, which occupies a fond place in our hearts, came here because you care. Thank you for your attention."

Offended both by what he said and what he did not say, reportedly hundreds of delegates who undoubtedly consider themselves to be friends of the Africans, walked out on the President.

The great puzzle is why these friends of the Africans found the truth, as told by the WHO, so unpalatable. Medical science everywhere in the world recognises the central importance of diseases of poverty.

As we will demonstrate later, even the most highly developed countries in the world are themselves involved in a struggle against diseases of poverty within their own borders.

For some strange reason, Africa, among the poorest continents of the world, is not supposed to talk about these diseases of poverty and to focus on their eradication. We are urged from all sides to break the silence about HIV/AIDS and maintain perfect silence about the diseases of poverty.

The war to defeat AIDS is also a war to defeat the humiliation and dehumanisation of the African people.

This humiliation and dehumanisation ‘is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.’

When the humiliated and dehumanised speak of it too much, some friends of the African judge such conversation as not being a pretty thing. Discussion then becomes impossible.

The war to defeat AIDS is a difficult struggle because it is not only a struggle against the conditions that produce ill health and unnecessary death among millions of Africans, challenging as this struggle is.

It is a difficult struggle also because it has to be waged against some friends of the African, who find that the truth is not a pretty thing.

Asserting that they stand on irrefutable scientific knowledge, these particular friends of the Africans, and the Africans themselves, are horrified beyond measure that the Africans will perish, consumed by an HIV/AIDS pandemic which is sweeping across the face of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Statistics are produced regularly to show rapidly growing HIV infections and rapidly growing deaths from HIV/AIDS on our continent.

Our friends claim that millions of Africans, in increasing numbers, are infected with a highly mutant and indestructible Human Immunodeficiency Virus. They say that this HI Virus is communicated from person to person through heterosexual intercourse and from mother to child.

To stop the spread of the Virus, they say that the Africans should abstain from sexual intercourse or use condoms.

They also say that HIV-positive mothers should be given drugs to stop the transmission of the Virus. Their babies, too, should be given the same drugs, presumably to kill the Virus if the mother has nevertheless transmitted it.

They urge that in the event of rape, the victims should also be given drugs, in case the rapist/s is or are carriers of the HI Virus.

They argue that all the above conforms, unequivocally, to the best available scientific knowledge. It is therefore unquestionable. Diagnosis, prevention and treatment are all based on immutable scientific truths that were agreed by the global scientific community 20 years ago.

It is then said that to question any of the above, or to ask any questions whatsoever, is to commit the sacrilege of questioning science itself and take on the guilt of the perpetration of the high crime of genocide.

The message is simple to understand and communicate. If it moves – clothe it in a condom! If it was naked – destroy its diseased emission with drugs!

The message is also simple in another way. The assertion is made that scientific discoveries about HIV and AIDS were proclaimed two decades ago. At the moment of the proclamation, the science of AIDS came to a standstill. It was frozen at this particular moment into an unquestionable and unchangeable monument to scientific thought.

Such scientific knowledge as was possible two decades ago must be supported by all and sundry, including scientists, as part of a religious dogma. Accordingly, to establish his or her credentials, everybody must answer the ballad question – do you believe that HIV causes AIDS! Belief about a scientific matter, and not empirical evidence, thus becomes the criterion of truth.

In his book, "Eros & Civilisation", (Sphere Books, London: 1970), Herbert Marcuse wrote of our epoch as "a period when the omnipotent apparatus punishes real non-conformity with ridicule and defeat… "

And so it has come to pass that anybody who has dared to question any of the above allegedly established scientific truths, has been confronted by this omnipotent apparatus. Accordingly, it has punished non-conformity with ridicule, defeat and worse.

"The primal father, as the archetype of domination, initiates the chain reaction of enslavement, rebellion, and reinforced domination which marks the history of civilisation. But ever since the first, prehistoric restoration of domination following the first rebellion, repression from without has been supported by repression from within, the unfree individual introjects his masters and their commands into his own mental apparatus. The struggle against freedom reproduces itself in the psyche of man, as the self-repression of the repressed individual, and his self-repression in turn sustains his masters and their institutions." (Our emphases).

In our case, it would seem that this is precisely what the "omnipotent apparatus" has achieved. The defeat and repression of the non-conformists is sustained by repression from within. The unfree individuals, the Africans, have introjected their masters and the commands of the masters into their own mental apparatus. Thus do they sustain their masters, their ideas and their institutions.

"The people, efficiently manipulated and organised, are free; ignorance and impotence, introjected heteronomy (the internalisation by the ‘unfree’ as the true exercise of individual autonomy of the practice of seeming to make an independent determination of choices, which are, in reality, pre-determined by another – Our annotation) is the price of their freedom."

"What started as subjection by force soon became ‘voluntary servitude’, collaboration in reproducing a society which made servitude increasingly rewarding and palatable… Today, this union of freedom and servitude has become ‘natural’ and a vehicle of progress."

Mark Twain put this differently when he said the ‘all the human race loves a lord… In the Jardin des Plantes I have seen a cat that was so vain of being the personal friend of an elephant that I was ashamed of her.’

Perhaps in citing these passages, especially from "Eros & Civilisation", we have moved forward far too quickly in terms of the presentation of our narrative, which the omnipotent apparatus views and denounces as non-conformist.

"And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness."

Taking example from this, though disadvantaged by the fact that we do not have the power of the Creator, we trust that what we present in this brief discourse will help all of us to separate the light from the darkness with regard to the issue of AIDS. This may be difficult. It is, nevertheless, critically important.

Given that our minds on this matter have become thoroughly clogged by the information communicated by the omnipotent apparatus, a miracle will have to be achieved to get all our people to use their brains, rather than perish on emotional responses based on greatly heightened levels of fear.

In reality, as will become clear, what we are about is the cleaning of the Augean stables that constrain the African mind. Let us present our first scientific fact.

The first report on the incidence of HIV in South and Southern Africa was published in the "New England Journal of Medicine" and the "South African Medical Journal", both in 1985.

Two of the most important findings in this report were that in our country and region:

"The only positive subjects were in the group compromising male homosexuals. The majority of these positive subjects had either recently been to the United States or had had sexual contact with other homosexuals who had visited the United States… Our preliminary data show that the agent implicated in causing AIDS, HTLV-III (later named HIV), is not endemic in this part of Africa."

During the same year, October 1985, German researchers had an article published in the British medical journal, The Lancet. They stated that:

"the data suggest that HTLV-III was rare in Africa until recently, and still is rare in much of the continent."

Some of our friends, the friends of the Africans, say that five years later, this situation had changed completely. They say that now, in our region and country, the HI Virus was transmitted heterosexually and that it had become endemic.

The point made in the 1985 report about male homosexuals and HIV coincided with what science said about the incidence of HIV in the United States and Western Europe at the time.

To all intents and purposes, 15 years later, this situation has not changed both in the US and in Western Europe. But, as we have said, and as is generally known, our own situation has changed radically, resulting also in it being said that we now have the highest incidence of HIV or the spread of HIV in the world.

The question that arises from this is – why! Why does the same Virus behave differently in the US and Western Europe from the way it behaves in Southern Africa!

It would seem obvious that this question must be asked. If we are interested in the advance of scientific knowledge, the better to understand the African human condition, it is imperative that an answer be found.

It would seem equally obvious that for us successfully to deal with the HI Virus as it affects us, we need to understand what induces it to behave differently in different parts of the world.

In answer to these questions, some of our friends, the friends of the Africans, say that we are affected by a particular type or variant of the HI Virus, which is unique to ourselves and which also mutates at a high frequency rate.

However, this answer throws up new questions. Why is this special type of HI Virus confined only to our region of the world! Why does it not spread to other areas, even within Africa! What happened to the 1985 South African HI Virus which behaved in the same way as the US and West European HI Virus! If it mutated into what it is today, why did it not mutate in the same way in the US and Western Europe!

Once more, scientifically substantiated answers to these questions are necessary to enable us to defeat the HI Virus as it affects us. It would seem only logical, once the assertion was made that ours is a unique HI Virus, that, consequently, unique solutions have to be found to respond to this distinct situation.

Up to now, no answers have been provided to any of the questions that have been posed. Instead, in the name of science and friendship with the Africans, the omnipotent apparatus of which Marcuse wrote, has sought to present honest questions as a manifestation of unacceptable non-conformity.

It has done everything it could, and continues to act, to punish those who dare to ask questions. It uses its might, sustained by the self-repression of the Africans, to ensure the permanent repression of those who inquire.

In 1995 three scientists, Zvi Bentwich, Alexander Kalinkovich & Ziva Weisman, sought to provide answers to some of these questions in a ‘Viewpoint’ published in "Immunology Today" (Vol 16 No 4). They wrote:

"Several features of the AIDS epidemic in Africa mark it as a distinct entity from the disease that is present in North America and Europe: it is primarily a heterosexually transmitted disease with a male-to-female ratio of 1:1, and lacks the known ‘classical’ risk groups of male homosexuals and intravenous (i.v.) drug users; it is probably transmitted more easily; the progression of infection and disease is faster – the time from infection to onset of clinical manifestations and overall survival may be shorter; and the clinical manifestations are different, particularly the main opportunistic infections and the main organ systems involved…

"Our view is that profound changes in the host immune response may account for the dramatic differences in the behaviour of the AIDS epidemic in Africa and in other developing countries. Such changes make the host more susceptible to HIV infection and less capable of controlling the infection once it is acquired. Infectious diseases, mostly helminth (intestinal worm) infections endemic in Africa and the developing countries, activate the immune system and alter its balance in such a way that makes the host more receptive to HIV and more vulnerable to its effects. This altered ‘background’ immune response must be taken into consideration when designing vaccines and devising new therapies for HIV in Africa and other developing countries. (Our emphasis).

"The average African host is exposed to a huge number of infectious diseases from early childhood onwards. These include various bacterial, viral and parasitic infections. Noteworthy is the wide prevalence of helminth infections, malaria and tuberculosis in most parts of Africa: especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, and in East and West Africa. Also of central importance is the very high prevalence of STDs, particularly genital ulcer diseases (GUDs), which play an important role in facilitating the dissemination of HIV infection into the general population… (Our emphasis).

"In addition to the central role of STDs, important cofactors such as the cultural habit of scarification, as well as transfusion, hygiene and nutrition, may facilitate HIV transmission and infection."

On February 27, 2002, the British newspaper "The Guardian" carried two articles, one entitled: "Sex diseases soar among generation no longer in fear of Aids epidemic", and the other: "Scourge of syphilis returns as gays fail to heed safe sex message".

"Within the past year there have been outbreaks of syphilis in Manchester, North London and Brighton. The disease, which had almost disappeared from Britain, can lead to brain damage, disability and even death if untreated…

"Around three quarters of the Manchester cases have been in young gay or bisexual men, typically in their twenties or early thirties. The heterosexual cases were thought to be a separate cluster with links abroad. About a quarter had another sexually transmitted infection as well as syphilis and around a fifth knew they were HIV positive…

"A Manchester health authority report said the men told of heavy use of alcohol, and drugs ‘with aphrodisiac and disinhibitory effects’... Further research is needed into why people seem not to be heeding safer sex advice, particularly in relation to unprotected anal sex. Reasons could include boredom with the messages, people feeling (inaccurately) that HIV is curable… "

"Sexually transmitted diseases are rampaging through the UK unchecked as a new generation of young people, who missed the Aids scare of the 1980s, fail to protect themselves by practising safe sex.

"According to a report published yesterday by the British Medical Association, (BMA), sexually transmitted infections, which include HIV/Aids, gonorrhoea and syphilis, have soared by almost 300, 000 cases between 1995 and 2000. The consequences can be devastating. Those who become HIV positive may not die but are condemned to a lifetime on toxic drugs, while thousands of women who unknowingly contract chlamydia, which often has no symptoms, risk infertility…

"Says the BMA, the group most at risk now – aged 18-24 – are too young to have seen the (1980s Aids) adverts or been impressed by (their) dire message…

"Paul Martin, sexual health programme manager in Brighton, where gay men have been encouraged to go for six monthly sexual health ‘MOTs’ because of an outbreak of syphilis, said their clinics were now ‘bursting at the seams’."

"From 1995 to 2000 the figures for new cases (of) gonorrhoea were up by 102 per cent… , chlamydia up by 107 per cent… , and syphilis up by 145 per cent… Thousands of cases of at least 22 other sexually transmitted infections provide the new total.

"Dr James Bingham, consultant in genito-urinary medicine at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals in London, said syphilis was reaching the level seen when Second World War troops came home and gonorrhoea was at levels seen before the Aids campaigns."

The same edition of "The Daily Telegraph" carries a letter by Robert Whelan of "Civitas" which comments on the BMA report. It is entitled "The results of Aids scaremongering". The letter says:

"The spread of STDs, which is particularly concentrated among teenagers and the early twenties, can truly be described as having reached epidemic proportions, and the consequences of some of these conditions can be both serious and long lasting.

"However, the false sense of security that young people have about STDs is partly due to the hysterical promotion of Aids as a major public health issue in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Aids "epidemic" never materialised and, partly as a result, people now treat all warnings about the consequences of sexual activity as scaremongering. (Our emphasis.)

"The question is: what do we do about it now? Unfortunately, the leaders of the medical profession appear to have few ideas."

The issues raised by Robert Whelan apply directly and immediately to us. We are the latest victim of the scare mongering that visited the people of the US, the UK and the rest of the western world "in the late 1980s and early 1990s." We too are already harvesting the bitter fruits of the sustained campaign of which Robert Whelan complains.

Had he spoken out against this scare mongering in the 1980s and 1990s, Robert Whelan would have been denounced by the omnipotent apparatus as engaging in a "denial" that would condemn millions of Britons to death.

But, as in the UK, it is precisely this scare mongering that is condemning millions of our own people to ill-health, disability and death because of a refusal to recognise the critical importance of the diseases of poverty and other illnesses that afflict our people, including STDs. This is done to sustain a massive political-commercial campaign to promote anti-retroviral drugs.

The British Medical Association was reporting on the situation in the UK as at year 2000. We are talking here of a country that has a very well developed health infrastructure and a population that is not generally affected by diseases of poverty or exceedingly low levels of education.

The article we quoted earlier, published in 1995 by "Immunology Today" and written by Zvi Bentwich et al, which pointed to "the central role" of sexually transmitted diseases in contributing to immune deficiency, referred especially to Africa and the rest of the developing world.

In that case we were talking of countries that have a very weak health infrastructure, endemic diseases of poverty and widespread ignorance, which results in many taboos and superstitions. If it can be said now of a country as developed as the UK, that a crisis of STDs is emerging, we can only imagine what is happening in the countries of which Bentwich wrote!

Research from the MRC Maternal and Perinatal Research Unit at Kalafong Hospital in Tshwane indicates that between 2,8% and 11% of stillbirths and perinatal deaths were attributed to syphilis in 1993. (Delport, De Jong, Pattinson & Odendaal).

Since then, the prevalence of active syphilis infection in mothers in antenatal care has been reduced by more than half. This success is due to improved primary health care, antenatal care, supply of penicillin, etc.

It is estimated that a 20% reduction in STD’s in South Africa over the next 15 years would result in HIV sero prevalence of below 1% in 2015 rather than the projected 16% (Wasserheit 1992). There are 11 million episodes of STD’s being treated annually in South Africa, often unsatisfactorily (Reddy, 1999), with 12% of men report symptoms suggestive of STI in the previous 12 months. (South African Demographic Health Survey, 2000).

Because of these prevalence levels, our government is paying particular attention to the prevention and treatment of STD’s. For the reasons we have already stated, this will make an important contribution to the fight against acquired immune deficiency.

But for the omnipotent apparatus the most important thing is the marketing of the anti-retroviral drugs. The issues raised by Bentwich and others, of the importance of STDs with regard to immune deficiency have been buried by the imposition of a blanket silence about the incidence and prevalence of these diseases. At the same time, it is demanded of all of us that we must break the silence!

Hopefully, the report of the British Medical Association will become better known to alert even us, who, as Marcuse said, may be suffering from the self-repression of the repressed individual. We should be alerted to the fact that if STDs in a country as developed as the UK are "rampaging through the (country) unchecked", then the situation in our countries must be catastrophic.

Two or three years ago, the South African Medical Research Council (MRC) prepared a report for Eskom on "the incidence of HIV" among the staff of the company. In this report the MRC drew attention to two disturbing matters.

One of these was the high incidence of STDs among our people, as noted by Bentwich et al. The second was the very shoddy medical treatment of these diseases by general practitioners in our country, which leaves many infected people continuing to incubate these diseases because of incomplete and incompetent treatment by our doctors. The article by Bentwich et al draws attention to the serious threat this poses with regard to our immune systems.

Devoted as it is to the propagation of the faith about HIV/AIDS and the marketing of anti-retroviral drugs, the MRC - a state institution supposedly dedicated to serve the people of South Africa – says virtually nothing in its public communications about STDs in our country and what we should do about them.

We know why the pharmaceutical companies pay little attention to the overwhelming majority of diseases that afflict the poor. The simple reason is that the treatment of these diseases does not offer big profits.

The public servants working at the MRC have still to explain why they seem so little interested in the overwhelming majority of diseases that afflict the poor. Could it be the same reasons as those influencing the behaviour of the commercial enterprises!

In a year 2000 letter to a WHO Task Force on STDs, Dr John B. Scythes of Canada wrote:

"Our basic concept is that by stopping syphilis, or at least slowing it down, far fewer people will get HIV-infected and/or develop AIDS – but not just because of fewer opportunities for transmission of the virus. I respectfully suggest that syphilis represents more than simply an ulcerative or focal activation phenomenon in HIV acquisition/AIDS. Syphilis may also turn out to be an important immunologic co-factor for susceptibility to active viral expression and progression to AIDS…

"I am suggesting you consider the problem of latent syphilis, when the disease has gone untreated or inadequately treated for some highly variable period of time, a phenomenon which has simply not been investigated in modern times in terms of its immunologic consequences." (Our emphasis).

Other scientists have also addressed the issues raised above, that "profound changes in the host immune response may account for the dramatic differences in the behaviour of the AIDS epidemic in Africa and in other developing countries."

In an article in the World Journal of Microbiology & Biotechnology 11, 135-143, E. Papadopulos-Eleopolus et al, wrote:

"AIDS researchers in Africa, including those from the CDC and WHO, admit that immune deficiency in Africa has existed for a considerable period of time and this has not been due to HIV.

"‘Tuberculosis, protein calorie malnutrition, and various parasitic diseases can all be associated with depression of cellular immunity’ (Pearce, R.B. 1986 Heterosexual transmission of AIDS. Journal of the American Medical Association 256, 590-591. Piot, P. et al.)’

"‘A wide range of prevalent (in Africa) protozoal and helminthic infections have been reported to induce immunodeficiency. (Clumeck, N. et al: Journal of the American Medical Association 254; New England Journal of Medicine 310.’

"‘Among healthy Africans resident in a non-AIDS area, the numbers of helper and suppressor lymphocytes were the same in HTLV-III/LAV seropositive and seronegative subjects… (Biggar, R.J. et al: The Lancet II, 520-523.)’

"‘Africans are frequently exposed, due to hygienic conditions and other factors, to a wide variety of viruses, including CMV, EBV, hepatitis B virus, and HSV, all of which are known to modulate the immune system… Furthermore, the Africans in the present study are at an additional risk for immunologic alterations since they are frequently afflicted with a wide variety of diseases, such as malaria, trypanosomiasis, and filariasis, that are also known to have a major effect on the immune system… (CMV=cytomegalovirus; EBV=Epstein-Barr virus; HSV=herpes simplex virus). (Quinn, T.C. et al: Journal of the American Medical Association, 257, 2617-2621.)’ "

When "The New Encyclopaedia Britannica" (15th Edition), discusses "immune deficiencies" it says:

"There are several ways in which the protective mechanisms (of the immune system) outlined above may fail. Some are inborn, due to genetic defects in the development of one or more of the cells involved in immune responses. Others result from infectious agents that damage essential immune cells. Still others are due to poisons or to drugs administered accidentally or with the intention of curing or ameliorating other diseases. In yet other cases, the immune deficiency stems from inadequate nutrition…

"Severe infections by certain parasites, such as trypanosomes, also cause immune deficiency, as do forms of cancer, but it is uncertain how this comes about…

"In countries where the diet, especially that of growing children is grossly inadequate in respect to protein intake, severe malnutrition ranks as an important cause of immune deficiency. Antibody responses and cell-mediated immunity are seriously impaired, probably due to atrophy of the thymus and the consequent deficiency of helper T cells. This renders the children particularly susceptible to measles and diarrheal diseases. Fortunately, they thymus and the rest of the immune system can recover completely if adequate nutrition is restored."

In its discussion of "sleeping sickness", "The Oxford English Dictionary", Second Edition, says:

"Any of several similar diseases caused by protozoans of the genus Trypanosoma and transmitted by flies of the genus Glossina, prevalent in tropical Africa, and characterised by the proliferation of the trypanosomes in the blood and changes in the central nervous system leading to apathy, coma, and death."

(We have inserted this definition to explain to the reader some of the diseases caused by the trypanosomes referred to in the medical texts.)

Pacifici et al describe the effects of 100mg of the "recreational" drug Ecstacy used by young people at "rave parties". The 17 volunteers received one or two doses in a 24 hour period, resulting in a 30% decline in blood concentration of CD4+ cells within hours of the single dose. The CD4+ levels recovered to their former levels within the subsequent 24 hours.

Among subjects who received two doses of the drug four hours apart, the decline of CD4+ cells was even more serious, reaching a level of 40% below normal. Although a day later T cell levels rose, they did not return to normal.

(Pacifici R, et al: "Effects of repeated doses of MDMA (‘Ecstacy’) on cell-mediated immune response in humans". Life Sciences 2001; 69: 2 931 – 2 941.)

Furthermore, the report claims that the effect of Ecstasy can rise to deadly levels among people living with AIDS who take protease inhibitors and non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors such as nevirapine.

In another study, Pacifici et al report on the effect on the immune system of the combination of Ecstacy and alcohol, for which they used six healthy volunteers.

There was a decline in CD4/CD8 cell ratio due to a decrease in both percentage and absolute terms of CD4 T-helper cells and a simultaneous increase in natural killer cells. Alcohol consumption produced a decrease in T-helper cells and B lymphocytes. The combination of MDMA and alcohol (ethanol) had the greatest suppressive effect on T cells. Drug treatment also produced also produced a large increase of immunosuppressive cytokines.
(Pacifici R, et al: "Acute effects of 3,4 methylendioxymethamphetamine alone and in combination with ethanol on the immune system in humans". J Pharmacol Exp Ther, 2001; 296(1): 207-215.)

Put simply, what all this means is that the drug Ecstasy on its own and in combination with alcohol suppresses the immune system. It is not difficult to see from this that, as with intravenous drug users, prolonged abuse of this drug alone and together with alcohol, can lead to acquired immune deficiency. This has nothing to do with HIV!

All the scientific texts we have cited assert that there are many conditions that cause changes to the immune system, including malnutrition and various tropical diseases, themselves a manifestation and consequence of poverty and underdevelopment. To our knowledge, no serious scientist has or would question these known and provable scientific truths.

Unfortunately for us, and the scientists, the omnipotent apparatus denounces these views as being non-conformist and therefore totally unacceptable. It condemns them as belonging to a school of thought categorised as "dissident" and genocidal. They must therefore be suppressed.

This must be done, so they say, to save us, the Africans, from the HIV/AIDS pandemic and, according to them, the sole cause of immune deficiency, HIV.

Honest medical science recognises the disastrous impact of malnutrition on us as Africans and the rest of the developing countries.

An Indian article (aidscareindia.com) says: (See also: the World Health Report, 1998):

"Some 40% of the 10 million deaths among under-five children each year in the developing world are associated with malnutrition…

"Maternal malnutrition is the major determinant of IUGR (intrautrine growth retardation) in developing countries…

"In Africa… the actual number of malnourished children has, in fact, risen. In addition, natural disasters, wars, civil disturbances, and population displacement have all contributed to continuing high rates of malnutrition…

"Iodine deficiency disorders (IDD) constitute the single greatest cause of preventable brain damage in the fetus and infant, and of retarded psychomotor development in young children. It remains a major threat to the health and development of populations the world over, but particularly among preschool children and pregnant women in low-income countries…

"Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is a major public health problem, and again the most vulnerable are preschool children and pregnant women in low-income countries. In children, VAD is the leading cause of preventable visual impairment and blindness… In addition, VAD significantly increases the risk of severe illness and death from common child infections, particularly diarrhoeal diseases and measles… In VAD-prevalent countries, pregnant women often experience deficiency symptoms, such as night blindness, that continue into the early period of lactation…

"Iron deficiency is the world’s most widespread nutritional disorder, affecting both industrialised and developing countries. In the former, iron deficiency is the main cause of anaemia. In developing countries, it is also associated with other nutrient deficiencies (folic acid, vitamin A, B12), malaria, intestinal parasitic infestations (especially hookworm, schistosomiasis and amoebiasis), and chronic infections such as HIV…

"Zinc deficiency causes growth retardation or failure, diarrhoea, immune deficiencies, skin and eye lesions, delayed sexual maturation, night blindness and behavioural changes…

"Inadequate dietary calcium intake is associated with a number of common, chronic medical disorders worldwide, including osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, cardiovascular disease (hypertension and stroke), diabetes, dyslipidaemias, hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, obesity, and cancer of the colon…

"Outbreaks of beriberi, pellagra and scurvy still occur among the extremely poor and underprivileged and, not infrequently, in large refugee populations…

"Between 30% and 40% of all cases of cancer are preventable by feasible and appropriate diets, physical activity and maintenance of appropriate body weight."

The same applies to heart disease and stroke, which accounted for 22% of deaths in South Africa in 1996.

One third of the annual 55.7 million deaths in 2001 globally, were caused by heart disease and stroke, with the majority occurring in developing countries. This is a true "pandemic", propagated by the ‘globalisation’ of risk factors such as cigarette smoking, salty high saturated fat foods, obesity and lack of exercise.

(NB: in many parts of our country, our soil suffers from zinc deficiency. This affects the plants grown in such soils, which are part of the national food supply. In addition, the staple maize meal consumed by the majority of our people comes out of the milling process completely denuded of its nutritional value. Nevertheless, because the religious faith demanded of us prescribes that we attribute all ill health to the HI Virus, it is prohibited that any of the foregoing should either be known or discussed. Any discussion focused on eliminating the zinc deficiency mentioned above falls victim to the accusation of ‘fiddling while Rome burns.’ Terrified of bad publicity, and keen to demonstrate that we are not fiddlers, energetically and with smiles on our faces, we fan and feed the fires that are consuming Rome!)

A US-trained physician from Haiti, Paul Farmer, has written in his book "AIDS and Accusation": (University of California Press, 1993):

"Although repeatedly termed a ‘complete mystery’ by North American academics, the epidemiology of AIDS and its silently transmitted precursor, HIV, is only superficially random. Careful review of existing data and critical assessment of the validity of certain studies allow us to conclude that the Haitian epidemic is a tragic but unsurprising component of a much larger pandemic. In the various theaters of this international scourge, whether New York or Port-au-Prince, HIV has become what Sabatier (1988) has termed a ‘misery-seeking missile’. It has spread along the path of least resistance, rapidly becoming a disorder disproportionately striking the poor and vulnerable… AIDS is far more likely to join a host of other sexually transmitted diseases – including gonorrhea, syphilis, genital herpes, chlamydia, hepatitis B, lymphogranuloma venereum, and even cervical cancer – that have already become entrenched among the poor." (Our emphases.)

Not surprisingly, "the Harvard University Gazette" of March 19, 1998 carried an article entitled – "AIDS Epidemic Called Crisis Among Blacks". The article, written by William J. Cromie said:

"Once considered a white epidemic in the United States, AIDS has now changed colour.

"From 1985 until 1996, whites accounted for the highest percentage of AIDS infections, but the line was crossed in 1996. Cases among whites dropped from 60 percent of the total in 1985 to about 35 percent in 1997. Among blacks, cases have almost doubled, from about 25 percent to 45 percent, in the same period…

"Henry Louis Gates Jr… summed up the situation this way: ‘While blacks make up only 12 percent of the U.S. population they account for almost half of the cases of AIDS’…

"The numbers are especially bleak for black women and children… Black women represent the highest percentage (56 percent) of all AIDS cases reported among women, and an increasing proportion of new cases (60 percent). Fifty-five percent of new infections with the AIDS virus among 20 to 24-year-olds occurs among blacks.

"Among those between the ages of 24 and 44 years, three times as many black as white men died of AIDS in 1996. Five young black women died for every white woman in the same year…

"The CDC also reported that black children currently account for 58 percent of the AIDS cases among newborns, compared to 18 percent for whites, and 23 percent for Hispanics.

"Most women, black and white, have contracted AIDS either through illegal drug use (about 45 percent) or heterosexual contact (about 38 percent). Many of the latter cases are due to having sex with men who have gotten the disease from contaminated needles.

"CDC statistics show that 22 percent of all AIDS infections among men were caused by dirty needles. Black males account for 36 percent of such cases…

"One in every two blacks has been tested for infection with HIV – the AIDS virus – compared with 38 percent of all Americans. Among blacks younger than 30 years the testing rate is 65 percent. Most of the testing was done during the past 12 to 18 months."

As Dr Farmer of Haiti had said, five years before the Harvard article appeared, whether in New York or Port-au-Prince, HIV has spread along the path of least resistance, rapidly becoming a disorder disproportionately striking the poor and vulnerable.

All of this tells us, the Africans, that poverty and underdevelopment are a major cause of premature mortality and disability among us. We are confronted by ‘the larger pandemic’ of poverty and underdevelopment. But the omnipotent apparatus is intent that we should not know all this. If we do, we should discount it as being of no major consequence.

And yet there is a large volume of literature that addresses the critically important issue of health, poverty and underdevelopment, some of which we will now proceed to cite.

"In rural Africa agriculture, health and the environment are like three sides of a triangle. As the sides define and determine the triangle, so do agriculture, health and the environment both define and determine rural development. For socio-economic development to occur attention must be paid to all the three aspects…

"Despite national and international efforts to improve health for all, many communities in East Africa are still plagued with communicable and other preventable diseases such as tuberculosis, immunisable childhood diseases, nutritional disorders, maternal deaths, eye infections, injuries, and problems related to alcohol and narcotic drug abuse.

"Common infections such as acute respiratory tract infections, diarrhoea, malaria and sexually transmitted diseases (including HIV/AIDS) are responsible for most of the morbidity and mortality in rural communities. The incidence of many of these diseases can be drastically reduced through community based health education, immunization, improved mother and child health care and enhanced nutrition."

The University of Glasgow Department of General Practice,
International primary health care, has published the following article:

"Health in Zambia and the UN AIDS Conference in Lusaka" Dr DOROTHY LOGIE, GP Adviser to Borders Health Board (Report on a meeting held on 09/02/00) in which she writes:

"At a recent conference in Lusaka the staggering proportions of the AIDS epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa was thrown into relief. With 10% of the world's population and two thirds of the world's cases of HIV, the burden of what is arguably the worst epidemic to hit mankind since the 'black death' has fallen primarily on the world's poorest nations.

"With Zambia as an example, Dr Logie set the HIV epidemic in its context. The fall in life expectancy to 43 years has not only followed on from an ever increasing incidence of HIV but has been in the context of a 30% cut in spending on education and a 50% cut in spending on health. In a country which 20 years ago had a well developed schooling and health care service, diseases of poverty such as TB, waterborne diseases and malaria are on the increase, as are maternal and infant mortality indicators. One quarter of children are undernourished and one half of the country has no access to safe water. Three quarters of girls and a half of all children do not now complete primary education. Four fifths of the population live on less than 60p a day.

"Zambia owes the rest of the world, primarily the World Bank and the IMF, $6.5 Billion, more than twice the country's gross national product. The debt must be serviced at $200 million per annum, regardless of the cost to health, education or nutrition. This amounts to one half of all export earnings. Seven times as much is spent on servicing its debt as it can afford to spend on health care. The cuts in education and health care spending have been driven by structural re-adjustments demanded by the World Bank. These have included introducing user fees for health and education and placing a limit on state responsibilities. (see Table 1)…

"There is urgent need for action to challenge the selective blindness of a global economic system incapable of taking the radical steps necessary to provide stability and hope in an entire continent facing a bleak future. The positive first steps of the British government to cancel the debts of the world's 25 poorest countries, albeit with heavy pre-conditions, are to be supported and more drastic steps urged. As health professionals we have a duty to research and highlight the damaging impact on health of imposed Western economic re-adjustments and to unequivocally condemn the intolerable burden of unsustainable debt."

For its part, the "African Journal of Food and Nutritional Sciences", Volume 1 No. 1 August 2001, Abstracts, published the article:

CO-EXISTENCE OF OVER- AND UNDER-NUTRITION RELATED DISEASES IN LOW INCOME, HIGH-BURDEN COUNTRIES: A contribution towards the 17th IUNS congress of nutrition, Vienna, Austria 2001
Rutengwe R., Oldewage-Theron W, Oniang’o R & Vorster H.H.

"About one third of the world’s population suffer from micronutrient deficiencies and hundreds of millions suffer from chronic diseases of lifestyle. Prevalence rates, particularly low birth weight, stunting and underweight, remain high particularly in Eastern Africa and South Central Asia. More than a third of all children in developing countries remain constrained in their physical growth and cognitive development. The 1990 ambitious goal of halving childhood underweight prevalence by the year 2000 has not been achieved by most countries. Global progress in fighting malnutrition is slow and crippled by rapid increase of both communicable and non-communicable diseases, the so-called "double burden of disease". About 115 million people suffered from obesity related diseases in the year 2000. Overweight and obesity (globesity) prevalence is advancing rapidly in developing countries.

"Cardiovascular diseases (CVD), myocardial infarction, angina pectoris and stroke as one of the most important causes of mortality and morbidity globally, will continue to be first and second leading causes of death in the world. Most developing countries, including South Africa, currently are in the process of transition and experiencing the double burden of both communicable and non-communicable diseases in which chronic diseases of lifestyle such as CVD have emerged while the battle against infectious diseases has not been won. In the last few years the HIV/AIDS epidemic has spread extremely rapidly and is likely to double overall mortality rates, undermine child survival and halve the life expectancy over the next five years." (Our emphases).

The US Environmental Research Foundation published an article on February 5, 1998, entitled:

"Numerous studies in England and the U.S. have shown consistently that a person’s place in the social order strongly affects health and longevity. It now seems well-established that poverty and social rank are the most important factors determining health – more important even than smoking…

"George Kaplan and his colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley measured inequality in the 50 (US) states as the percentage of total household income received by the less well of 50% of households. (British Medical Journal, Vol 312, April 20, 1996: 999-1003.) It ranged from 17% in Louisiana and Mississippi to 23% in Utah and New Hampshire. In other words, by this measure, Utah and New Hampshire have the most EQUAL distribution of income, while Louisiana and Mississippi have the most UNEQUAL distribution of income.

"This measure of income inequality was then compared to the age-adjusted death rate for all causes of death, and a pattern emerged: the more unequal the distribution of income, the greater the death rate. For example in Louisiana and Mississippi the age-adjusted death rate is about 960 per 100,000 people, while in New Hampshire it is about 780 per 100,000 and in Utah it is about 710 per 100,000 people. Adjusting these results for average income in each state did not change the picture: in other words, it is the gap between rich and poor within each state, and not the average income of each state, that best predicts the death rate…

"Isn’t it time that the public health community – physicians, public health specialists, and environmentalists – recognised that poverty, inequality and racism cause sickness and death? Given what science now tells us, medical policy – including medical training – should aim to combat and eliminate poverty, inequality, and racism just as it now aims to combat and eliminate infectious diseases and cancer. With U.S. health care costs now exceeding $1 trillion each year, anti-poverty and anti-racism initiatives would be economically efficient as well as humane." (Our emphasis).

A British medical journal aimed at medical students, Student BMJ Vol 9, June 2001, published:

"Poverty is the number one killer in the world today, outranking smoking as the leading cause of death… (Our emphasis).

"Health professionals need to promote interdepartmental cooperation and action by governments to promote better education, water, and sanitation and other services which improve the lives of the poor. The diseases of poverty cannot be tackled without concerted economic and political action."

The series, Current Infectious Disease Reports 3:1-3, 2001, published an article:

"The Unacceptable Costs of the Diseases of Poverty" by Richard L. Guerrant, M.D., University of Virginia School of Medicine, USA, in which he writes:

"Poverty and lack of sanitation result in high-risk behaviours and malabsorption-inducing enteric infections. Thus the complex interactions of such societal issues as poverty and lack of basic sanitation in areas where only suboptimal therapeutic regimens are affordable may drive the resistant microbes that threaten us all…

"The most important medical/health advance of our century will be the discovery and realisation of the true costs of the diseases of poverty… (Guerrant’s emphasis.)

"The lessons of tropical and resistant infectious diseases are that only with a recognition of their root causes linked to poverty will we apply readily available technologies and develop new tools for their control. Only this recognition will determine whether we shall or shall not chart a secure future for ourselves and those who follow."

"In the last 50 years, almost 400 million people worldwide have died from hunger, hunger-related diseases and poor sanitation. That’s three times the number of people killed in all wars fought in the entire 20th century. (Above information provided by Bread for the World Institute)…

"Each day in the developing world, 30, 500 children die from preventable diseases such as diarrhoea, acute respiratory infections or malaria. Malnutrition is associated with over half of those deaths. (Above information provided by UNICEF, World Health Organisation)."

Naturally, the story is the same with regard to specific instances. On July 24, 2000, Johns Hopkins University issued the following statement:

"The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health $20 million to find the precise combination of vitamins and other micronutrients that will be most effectively save lives and prevent illness among impoverished mothers and children in the developing world…

"‘The results of these studies are likely to prove crucial to the well-being and survival of millions of women and children a year,’ said William R. Brodie, president of the Johns Hopkins University…

"In the developing world, an estimated one in four children dies before reaching age 5. Worldwide, some 11 million children and 7 million adults die each year from diseases associated with poverty."

"Hookworm infection is one of the most prevalent and devastating infections of humans - more than one billion individuals harbor hookworms in their intestine (1,2). Some tropical clinical investigators rank hookworm as the second most important parasitic infection of humans, next to malaria (3). Within developing economies hookworm is a leading cause of anemia and malnutrition. In China reliable estimates based on diagnostic testing of almost 1.5 million individuals indicate that 194 million individuals harbor hookworms (4,5), making hookworm one of China’s most significant public health problems. Similar numbers of cases of hookworm occur on the Indian subcontinent, in Sub-Saharan Africa (6), and in Central and South America (7) (Fig. 1).

"The World Bank estimates that more than 20% of the disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) lost from communicable diseases among children living in developing economies are a direct result of intestinal nematode infections like hookworm (9). In its 1993 World Development Report, the World Bank ranked intestinal helminths first as the main cause of disease burden in children aged 5 to 14 years.

"Estimates of hookworm infection in pregnancy conducted jointly by the Wellcome Centre for the Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases (Oxford University) and the WHO indicate that some 44 million women are simultaneously pregnant and infected with hookworm (10). An estimated 3-5 million of these pregnant women harbor heavy hookworm infections that adversely influence intrauterine growth rates, prematurity and birth weight.

"Overall, hookworms are central to the downward spiral of malnutrition and rural poverty in less developed countries. Recently, hookworm has also been identified in some populations as an important medical problem among the elderly living in poor rural areas (11).

"In this decade, new information has reawakened the international community to the importance of hookworm-associated chronic blood loss and the resulting protein malnutrition, negative nitrogen balance, iron deficiency and anemia. These features have again been linked to devastating consequences for both children and mothers (8-10,15-20). It is now well recognized that moderate and heavy hookworm infections during childhood cause stunting of linear growth, reduced physical fitness and physical activity, as well as intellectual and cognitive retardation in children (15,17-21).

"Many of these clinical features are directly attributable to the chronic effects of iron deficiency (22-24); in some instances these deficits are irreversible (24). Plasma protein losses also contribute to hookworm-associated malnutrition. As a consequence, children are also rendered susceptible to intercurrent viral and bacterial infections (15). Chronic hookworm infection prevents children from achieving their full potential to become productive individuals in later life. During pregnancy more than 10 percent of hookworm-infected women suffer worm burdens heavy enough to adversely affect intrauterine growth, prematurity, and birthweight (10).

"Together, these consequences devastate maternal and child health. When accurately accounted for, such as in the World Bank study mentioned above, these features place hookworm infection at the top of the list in terms of their impact on childhood and maternal health."

We should keep this in mind that hookworm is one of the conditions that produces a ‘false-positive’ when people are tested for the HIV status.

In 2000, the health authorities in Seattle, Washington, USA, carried out an interesting study entitled:

"The Health Status of American Indians (AI) and Alaska Natives (AN) living in King County" (2000).

The report included: Mortality rates for American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/AN) living in King County compared with all King County resident by age group and cause of death, three year averages, 1996-1998, as follows:

Water, food-borne disease

Water-borne
Hepatitis A	40.5	25.2	+61%
Blood, sex-borne disease
Hepatitis B	3.7	3.1	-
Chlamydia	366.9	200.1	+83%
Gonnorrhoea	86.1	57.0	+51%
Syphilis	6.5	3.9
AIDS	45.5	18.4	+147%
All causes	572.9	407.2	+41%
All mortality by poverty areas
>20% FPL	888.6	540.6	+64%
5-20% FPL	528.6	424.9	+24%
<5% FPL	421.6	754.5	-

(N.B. FPL = Federal poverty level. >20% FPL represents those areas in King County where more than 20% of the population lived below the federal poverty level, etc.)

Total infant mortality	12.5	5.2	+140%
Primary cause of infant death: SIDS	8.0	0.8	+900%

(N.B. SIDS = Sudden Infant Death Syndrome)

The WTO is also involved in this debate and struggle, which is about health, poverty and underdevelopment. During 2000, WTO DDG Rodriguez addressed the European Commission and said, among other things:

"Intellectual property rights are a necessary part of finding that balance (between providing adequate incentives for research and development and ensuring affordable access to new drugs.) They have an essential role to play in providing incentives for research and development. No company will invest the resources required for research and development without a promise of some degree of exclusivity in exploiting the results of its efforts. At the same time, it is also clear that the intellectual property system itself will not be sufficient to provide incentives for research and development into the diseases which mainly afflict the poor in developing countries, with limited purchasing power. We thus very much welcome the growing worldwide recognition of this and the initiatives being taken to fill this gap, involving as they do intergovernmental agencies, national governments and private foundations as well as the industry itself. The Commission’s Communication is an important contribution in this connection… (Our emphasis).

"In this sense, let me say that we, at the WTO, are fully convinced that there is a very strong relationship between trade, poverty and health. We fully acknowledge that efforts to promote basic public health as well as public education have a vital role to play in facilitating development. But, by the same token, development and the increased resources that it provides are vital for promoting public health. And an open trading system is a key component of development efforts." (Our emphasis).

The US economist, Dean Baker, has addressed some of the issues of concern to the WTO, as they affect the United States. He has written:

"Consumers pay more than three and a half dollars to the drug industry for every dollar of research induced by patent protection. Another two and a half dollars goes to industry profits and marketing – and to the legal costs, campaign contributions, and political lobbying needed to protect and extend the industry’s patent monopolies."

In his article: "Drug Prices in Crisis: The Case Against Protectionism", ("Dollars and Sense Magazine", May/June 2001), Dean Baker writes:

"The costs of patent protection to consumers are enormous. The industry, which includes such giants as GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, and Bristol-Myers Squibb, estimates that it sold $106 billion worth of drugs in 2000. If eliminating patent protection had reduced the price of these drugs by 75%, then consumers would have saved $79 billion. This figure, to put it in perspective, is 30% more than what the (US) federal government spends on education each year. It’s more than ten times the amount that the federal government spends on Head Start. And it roughly equals the nation’s annual bill for foreign oil.

"What do we get for this money? Last year, the pharmaceutical industry, according to its own figures, spent $22.5 billion on domestic drug research (and another $4 billion on research elsewhere). For tax purposes, the industry claimed research expenditures of just $16 billion. Since these expenditures qualify for a 20% tax credit, the federal government directly covered $3.2 billion of the industry’s research spending (20% of the $16 billion reported on tax returns.) Even if we accept the $22.5 billion figure as accurate, this still means that the industry, after deducting the government contribution, spent just over $19 billion of its own money on drug research.

"In other words, consumers (and the government, through Medicaid and other programs) spent an extra $79 billion on drugs because of patent protection, in order to get the industry to spend $19 billion of its own money on research. This comes out more than four dollars in additional spending on drugs for every dollar that the industry spent on research. The rest of the money went mainly to:

"If spending an extra four dollars on drugs in order to persuade the industry to spend one dollar on research doesn’t sound like a good deal, don’t worry. It gets worse…

"Last summer, the New York Times cited data showing that drugs, when tested by researchers who were supported by the drug’s manufacturer, were found to be significantly more effective than existing drugs 89% of the time. By contrast, drugs tested by neutral researchers were found to be significantly more effective only 61% of the time…

"By creating incentives to misrepresent, falsify, or conceal research findings, patent monopolies are harmful to our pocketbooks as well as our health… For example, a recent study estimated that consumers were spending $6 billion a year on patented medication for patients with heart disease, which was no more effective than generic alternatives in preventing heart problems. As a result of industry propaganda, consumers might also spend money on drugs that could be less effective than cheaper alternatives – or on drugs that could even be hazardous to their health…

"At the top of the list (of measures to counter the negative effects of protectionism with regard to drugs), the U.S. government should not be working with the pharmaceutical industry to impose its patents on developing countries. This is especially important in the case of AIDS drugs, since patent protection in sub-Saharan Africa may effectively be sentencing tens of millions of people to death."

In another article "Dying for Patients" (Center for Economic and Policy Research, October 29, 2001), Dean Baker writes:

"(The pharmaceutical industry) argue that the patent monopolies allow them to earn enough money to fund the research that produces these drugs in the first place.

"This claim is at best half true. Much of the most important research was funded with our tax dollars by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In many cases, the industry just came along in the final phases of testing in order to claim the patent rights. In fact, according to the industry’s own numbers, more research is actually supported by the government and private foundations and charities, than by the pharmaceutical companies."

"From a recent New York Times article: replying to critics of the drug industry who say it would rather find a cure for a bald American than a dying African, Francois Gros, a spokesman for Aventis, the French-German pharmaceutical company that makes three of the four sleeping sickness drugs, ruefully acknowledged: ‘That’s not completely wrong. We know what’s happening in the third world, but we don’t act.’ He went on to explain: ‘We can’t deny that we try to focus on top markets – cardiovascular, metabolism, anti-infection, etc. But we’re an industry in a competitive environment – we have a commitment to deliver performance for shareholders…

"And again from the New York Times: drug companies which last year spent $40 billion on research, have in two decades, come up with only four medicines specifically for tropical diseases."

All the foregoing, relating to health, poverty and underdevelopment should, in reality, be a matter of common sense. Spoken and published in many other parts of the world, it does not cause any consternation. But clearly, when these obvious truths are spoken here in our own country, they assume a more menacing meaning.

The omnipotent apparatus denounces them as constituting a "denial". When we seek to act within the parameters of the very health paradigm contained in the paragraphs we have quoted, this is condemned as "fiddling while Rome burns."

Our struggle for drugs and medicines that would be affordable to the millions of our poor people, was repudiated as a betrayal of the sacred principle of property rights, and a disastrous slap in the face of foreign investors.

The failure to ascribe the entire burden of disease that afflicts our people exclusively to the HI Virus earned our leaders the characterisation that they are genocidaires.

Stridently and openly, the omnipotent apparatus disapproves of our effort seriously to deal with the serious challenge in our country of health, poverty and underdevelopment. It is determined that it will stop at nothing until its objectives are achieved. What it seeks is that we should do its bidding, in its interests.

In this respect, all of us are obliged to chant that HIV=AIDS=Death! We are obliged to abide by the faith, and no other, that our immune systems are being destroyed solely and exclusively by the HI Virus. We must repeat the catechism that sickness and death among us are primarily caused by a heterosexually transmitted HI Virus. Then our government must ensure that it makes anti-retroviral drugs available throughout our public health system.

According to this argument, necessarily, therefore, the two principal and decisive responses open to us, to respond to Africa’s health challenges, are the use of condoms and the consumption of anti-retroviral drugs. Everything else that causes ill health and death among us, the omnipotent apparatus argues, is of peripheral importance.

However, the rejection of the argument by the omnipotent apparatus - that there is no special African HI Virus, but, rather, the scourge of poverty and underdevelopment - means that there are more questions that require answers.

One of these concerns the constitution, therefore, of our own unique HI Virus. How is it composed? How does it behave? What are its various mutant forms?

Scientists say that for them to be able to answer these questions, first of all, they need to isolate the Virus. They say that the tried and tested method of doing this is to use an electron microscope capable of magnifying this minute retrovirus to 300, 000 times its size. They would then be able to photograph and analyse it and thus answer the questions that have been posed.

There is at least one such an electron microscope in our country. The questions that arise are whether the Virus has been isolated and analysed, using this microscope and whether the resultant photographs exist!

Given the numbers of people who are said to have died of HIV/AIDS, the question must be asked – has the HI Virus been isolated during medical examinations and post-mortems to establish that the prime cause of illness and death is HIV infection?

The reality is that this seemingly critical first step that would enable us to know the nature of the creature we are dealing with has not been taken.

Strange as it may seem, given what our friends tell us about the Virus everyday, nobody has seen it, including our friends. Nobody knows what it looks like. Nobody knows how it behaves. Everybody acts on the basis of a series of hypotheses about the Virus, which are presumed to be facts, supposedly authenticated by ‘clinical evidence’.

Those who have imbibed the faith that millions among us are infected by a deadly HI Virus, will disbelieve the assertion that the work of isolating our unique HI Virus has not been done. The omnipotent apparatus will scream loudly that the telling of this truth constitutes the very heart of the criminal non-conformity that must be denounced and repressed by all means and at all costs.

Rather than perpetuate our self-repression, it is time that we demanded that the necessary scientific work be done to isolate and analyse the Virus that is said to be so deadly.

To defeat the HIV/AIDS pandemic requires that science does what it does normally, as it tries to understand viruses. It is difficult to understand why the HI Virus stands in a caste of its own, as an untouchable.

In any case, the scientists have the advantage that, more than 15 years ago, the scientists Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier claimed that they had identified and isolated this Virus. The scientific world accepted this claim and continues to do so.

There should therefore be no problem in repeating the established scientific work carried out by Gallo and Montagnier, who are accepted as the "co-discoverers" of the HI Virus.

What the Africans do not know, of course, is that at the time HIV was ‘discovered’ in 1984, Montagnier’s French Pasteur Institute accused Gallo of having stolen the HIV discovery from them. Ultimately, this controversy was resolved when the two scientists, together with US President Reagan and French Premier Chirac signed an agreement in 1987, which proclaimed the two scientists as co-discoverers of HIV.

Interestingly, nobody asked the question – what do the political signatories know about science!

But even after this document was signed, in 1991 the US government’s National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Office of Scientific Integrity found that, with regard to the discovery of HIV, Gallo, as laboratory chief, had "created and fostered conditions that give rise to falsified/fabricated data and falsified reports."

In 1992, the NIH Office of Research Integrity determined that Gallo was guilty of scientific misconduct. Nevertheless, it said that this did not "negate the central findings" of Gallo, with regard to HIV.

In 1984, before any information was published in the scientific journals, and therefore examined by the scientific community, Gallo and US President Reagan’s Health and Human Services Secretary, Margaret Heckler, announced at a press conference that Gallo had isolated the "AIDS virus" and developed the test to prove the existence of the virus in human blood.

Clearly, the later findings about the scientific conduct of the "co-discoverer" could not, and would not, be allowed to interfere with what had been announced to the press and the world!

We must accept that all this belongs to an ancient and unchangeable past. What was stated as fact then, has become set in stone as fact.

Dr Joseph A. Sonnabend published an article in AIDS Forum 1989 entitled "Fact and Speculation about the Cause of AIDS." He wrote:

"The precise point at which a conjecture comes to be accepted as an established fact is far from clear, although in a commonsense fashion, the distinctions between them is usually quite evident. That HIV-1 is the cause of AIDS is a contention that was ceremoniously propelled out of the realm of speculation into that of proven fact by Margaret Heckler in 1984 in her public pronouncement the U.S. government scientists had discovered the ‘probable cause of AIDS’ – HTLV-III, later to be renamed ‘Human Immunodeficiency Virus’, of ‘HIV’, in an apparent confirmation of its etiologic role. Thus, overnight, a new orthodoxy came into being, unruffled by the subsequent discovery that there was a second cause of AIDS in another retrovirus… Despite the widespread acceptance of the etiologic roles of the HIVs in AIDS, these must remain conjectural as long as two questions (at least) remain open. One concerns pathogenesis and the other the association of the HIVs with AIDS. Both are important to the original presentation of HIV as the cause of AIDS, as the relate to the two props on which this presentation rested…

"It is now known that insufficient numbers of helper lymphocytes are actively infected to account for their loss by a direct cell-killing effect of HIV, and there is an alternative explanation for the association of HIV seropositivity with AIDS that does not require that it play an etiologic role, and that has yet to be excluded. To these two problems concerning the etiologic roles of the HIVs in AIDS must be added the apparent failure, thus far, of antiretroviral chemotherapy…

"The premature acceptance as fact of a contention that more properly belongs in the realm of speculation has had a number of far reaching consequence – let alone the painful fact that it has provided virtually no help to people with AIDS, despite a massive investment and six years of intensive work on the biology of the HIVs and the chemotherapy of infection with these viruses…

"The acceptance as fact rather than hypotheses that the HIVs cause AIDS is responsible in great part for a number of grave consequences…

"A. The almost total commitment of resources to the study of the HIVs has left alternative etiologic hypotheses unexplored. Should the HIVs be proven not to be the cause of AIDS, we will have to go back to the beginning in our studies on the cause of this disease, and will have lost six years and countless lives.

"B. Aspects of pathogenesis apparently unrelated to HIV have not been explored. Some examples will be given that could have been pursued as early as 1981…

"It has been suggested that questioning the etiologic role of HIV in AIDS may promote the spread of disease as it ‘frees one of the worry about testing positive as it ‘frees one of the worry about testing positive or the guilt of spreading the disease’. This is an irrational and poorly thought out objection. The reality of the mode of transmission of AIDS, whether sexually or by blood or blood products, is of course quite obvious, whether it is HIV or some other factor or factors that are transmitted.

"In fact, a ground-breaking booklet presenting the first safer sex guidelines appeared in 1883 and its was based on a multifactoral mode – not a single agent model. The measures suggested were identical to those usually proposed to limit the spread of HIV."

Despite the objections by the South African born and trained Dr Sonnabend, one of the first doctors to treat AIDS in New York and the US, speculation had been accepted as fact, that HIV causes AIDS.

If, however, despite and perhaps because of this peculiar manner of ‘advancing’ science, it is true that we have not identified our own unique virus, the question then arises – what methods were used to identify the millions in our country who are said to be HIV-positive?

The response to this question is that blood or saliva specimens were and are subjected to the ELISA test, said to be a test to establish whether specific anti-HIV antibodies exist in the particular specimens.

Yet some scientists have raised questions about whether, in fact, this ELISA or any other test, actually tests for the presence of HIV. But before we deal with this, let us mention what the manufacturers of the ELISA testing kits themselves say.

"EIA (ELISA) testing alone cannot be used to diagnose AIDS, even if the recommended investigation of the reactive specimens suggests a high probability that the antibody to HIV-1 is present."

"Although for all clinical and public health applications of the EIA both the degree of risk for HIV-infection of the person studied and the degree of reactivity of the serum may be of value in interpreting the test, these correlations are imperfect. Therefore, in most settings it is appropriate to investigate repeatedly reactive specimens by additional more specific or supplemental tests."

"At present there is no recognised standard for establishing the presence or absence of HIV-1 antibody in human blood. Therefore sensitivity was computed based on the clinical diagnosis of AIDS and specificity based on random donors." (Our emphasis.)
(Quotations taken from: ABBOTT LABORATORIES. Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1. FUVAB FffVI EIA. Abbott Laboratories, 66-8805/R5, January 1997:5.)

"The amplicor HIV-1 Monitor test is not intended to be used as a screening test for HIV or as a diagnostic test to confirm the presence of HIV infection."
(ROCHE. Amplicor HIV-1 Monitor test. Roche Diagnostic Systems, 13-06-83088-001, 06/96.)

To return to the scientists, Roberto A. Giraldo, MD, a physician and specialist in internal medicine, infectious and tropical diseases, says: (Continuum: Midwinter 1998/9.)

"The scientific literature has documented more than 70 different reasons for getting a positive reaction other than past or present infection with HIV. All these conditions have in common a history of polyantigenic stimulations."

"Since there is no scientific evidence that the ELISA test is specific for HIV antibodies, a reactive ELISA test at any concentration of serum would mean the presence of nonspecific or polyspecific antibodies. These antibodies could be present in all blood samples."

Indeed, Dr Giraldo explains in this article that he conducted his own tests at the New York Yorktown Medical Laboratory. He says:

"I first took samples of blood that, at 1:400 dilution (the recommended dilution for the ELISA test), tested negative for antibodies to HIV. I then ran the exact same serum samples through the test again, but this time without diluting them. Tested straight, they all came out positive. Since that time I have run about 100 specimens and have always gotten the same result."

In another article written by Dr Giraldo et al, published in Continuum, Summer 1999, the authors say:

"Some of the conditions that cause false positives on the so-called "AIDS test" are: past or present infection with a variety of bacteria, parasites, viruses, and fungi, including tuberculosis, malaria, leishmaniasis, influenza, the common cold, leprosy and a history of sexually transmitted diseases; the presence of polyspecific antobodies, hypergammaglobulinemias, the presence of auto-bodies against a variety of cells and tissues, vaccinations, and the administration of gammaglobulins or immunoglobulins; the presence of auto-immune diseases like erythematous systemic lupus, sclerodermia, dermatomyositis or rheumatoid arthritis; the existence of pregnancy and multiparity; a history of rectal insemination; addiction to recreational drugs; several kidney diseases, renal failure and hemodialysis; a history of organ transplantation; presence of a variety of tumours and cancer chemotherapy; many liver diseases including alcoholic liver disease; hemophilia, blood transfusions and the administration of coagulation factor; and even the simple condition of aging, to mention a few of them."

Citing various other scientists, such as Seligman M., et al, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine 1984: 311, 1286-1292; and WORLD HEALTH, Magazine of the WHO, 1994; 47(6): 1-31; Giraldo et al write:

"Malnutrition is known as the world’s first cause of immunodeficiency. Poverty is the main risk factor for malnutrition. Economical disparities have increased all over the world, but mainly in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, as well as in the larger impoverished strips of the developed cities. Never before has poverty been so prevalent and intense, nor has affluence been so big and concentrated in the hands of so few."

One mystery has always been the reported high sero prevalence of HIV in South Africa of over 15% (as extrapolated from Antenatal Clinic Survey data), compared with rates of 2% in West Africa and the Caribbean. In this regard, the experience of a physician working in an Eastern Cape prison, Dr Stuart A. Dwyer, is of note. His institution of 550 inmates has high rates of men having sex with men, with very little use of condoms. He routinely checks the HIV status of those who present to him with various illnesses, including STD. In the past 5 years, he has noted a sero prevalence of 2.8% for the jail as a whole, but recorded only a few deaths from AIDS-related disease. His conclusion is that the meaning of a positive HIV ELISA test in the African setting needs to be re-examined, and that in his "high risk" group, there is little evidence of an "AIDS pandemic".

When our own health workers says they have tested people for HIV, what do they mean?

When they say a person is HIV-positive, have they discounted all the conditions, other than HIV, which could make a person falsely test HIV-positive?

How do they arrive at the figure of millions of HIV-positive people, which they regularly proclaim?

Why do they discount poverty and the various conditions of ill-health it produces, as one of the most obvious causes of immune deficiency?

Surely, it is obvious that for them properly to treat any person who tests HIV-positive, they need to know the exact medical or health condition against which the immune system produces antibodies! This is the case even with veterinary scientists who have to treat cattle!

We say this because exactly the same generic system (the ELISA test) that is used to "test for HIV" in human beings, is also used to test for Foot and Mouth Disease in cattle! When it was used in this country to test our bovine herds for this disease, presumably having been designed to test the specific virus that causes the disease, it recorded many of our cattle as being "Foot and Mouth Disease-positive".

However, further clinical work carried out by both South African and British scientists demonstrated conclusively that all these were false-positives. None of the cattle tested and found to be "positive", in fact suffered from Foot and Mouth Disease!

Apart from the confirmation of the fact, well-known to scientists, that this equipment produces "false-positives", the critical point is that some scientists have made the point that these testing kits are not designed specifically to detect the presence of a particular virus in the human body, HIV. Accordingly, they assert that they do no such thing, in much the same way as, in this case, they detected a non-existent Foot and Mouth virus.

It was for these reasons that the Presidential Scientific AIDS Panel decided to seek an answer to the question – what do the HIV tests test?

Other questions arise concerning the incidence of disease and death in our country. The first questions emanate from the phenomenon of "opportunistic diseases". These are said to attack the body when it has been weakened by HIV.

The US government’s Centres for Disease Control (CDC) lists at least 29 of these "opportunistic diseases". These are:

Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, Kaposi’s sarcoma, toxoplasmosis, strongyloidosis, aspergillosis, cryptococcosis, candidiasis, cryptosporidiosis, cytomegalovirus, herpes simplex, progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, lymphoma of the brain, mycobacterium avium complex, histoplasmosis, isosporiasis, Burkitt’s lymphoma, immunoblastic lymphoma, candidiasis of the bronchi, trachea and lungs, encephalopathy, mycobacterium tuberculosis, wasting syndrome, coccidioidomycosis, cytomegalovirus retinitis, salmonella septicemia, recurrent bacterial pneumonia, invasive cervical cancer, pulmonary tuberculosis.

Of course, all these diseases existed before AIDS was discovered. A US activist, Christine Maggiore, has observed that:

"AIDS is a new name for 29 old illnesses and conditions, including yeast infection, diarrhoea, pneumonia, cancer and tuberculosis."

The issue of the diagnosis of AIDS in Africa was "simplified", and made more difficult, by the decision of the WHO that such diagnoses should be based only on four clinical symptoms. This goes by the name of the "Bangui definition".

These conditions are a fever, weight loss of 10 per cent, a persistent cough and diarrhoea.

"These four symptoms used to identify AIDS are identical to those associated with common African conditions such as malaria, tuberculosis, parasitic infections, and the effects of malnutrition and unsanitary water, all of which have troubled the continent for decades."

One of the questions that arises from all this is what has changed many well-known diseases from being well-known curable diseases into one incurable, and little known disease, called AIDS?

The French physician and historian of medicine, Mirko Grmek, tried to explain the puzzle in the following way:

"(AIDS) is not a disease in the old sense of the word, in as much as the virus is immunopathogenic, that it affects the immune system and produces symptoms only through the expedient of opportunistic infection or malignancy...In the past, a disease was defined either by clinical symptoms or by pathological lesions, which are morphological changes in organs, tissues, or cells. Nothing of the sort, neither clinical symptoms nor lesions, observable by the old means, characterises AIDS. It is not a disease in the sense given to the term before the twentieth century. Persons affected by HIV suffer and die with the signs and lesions that are typical of other diseases. As recently as twenty years ago, these opportunistic disorders were the only reality that physicians could observe and conceptualise."
("History of AIDS" by M. Grmek: Princeton University Press, 1990. Our emphases.)

"There are no criteria listed in any definition of AIDS that allow a person to fight off AIDS or to be cured of it. Once a person is diagnosed, he or she will have AIDS forever after, regardless of any improvement in state of health and regardless of whether death results from a non-AIDS associated death (for example, heart disease or diabetes.) This is another way in which the definition of AIDS is a medical novelty. A person has pneumonia as long as he or she is symptomatic and the germ causing the disease is present. Destroy the germ and eradicate the clinical symptoms, and the person us cured, regardless of the fact that both antibody to the germ and scarring of the lungs may persist for their lifetime… No such criteria exist for AIDS, despite the fact that some AIDS patients are still alive a dozen years after diagnosis with Kaposi’s sarcoma, Pneumocystis pneumonia, and other opportunistic diseases."

"This makes AIDS the first disease that no one can survive by definition. (Our emphasis). Not only is this description of AIDS logically bankrupt, it sends the demoralising and inaccurate message to people with HIV or AIDS that they have a disease that is not worth fighting. A more legitimate, and more hopeful, definition must be devised."

Because of all this, it has become imperative for us to know as precisely as possible what our people are dying from, specifically. To say that they are dying of AIDS will not help us in our struggle to improve the health of our people.

As Bernstein says, to say this would be to say our people have a disease that is not worth fighting. This would certainly condemn them to premature death. It is this that would constitute genocide.

Yet the mere report that the government is compiling a report on the causes of death, as reflected in the Notices of Death filed with our Department of Home Affairs, aroused the ire of the omnipotent apparatus, which characterised the search for accurate information about ourselves as "AIDS denial".

Nevertheless, to be able to intervene with regard to the health of our population, we must ask a number of questions, regardless of the anger of the omnipotent apparatus.

What are we doing to prevent and treat these diseases, including those described as "opportunistic"?

If deaths are said to be HIV-related, on what is this based, scientifically – i.e. did the cadaver have the HI Virus?

In this article, we will mainly discuss the issue of so-called mother-to-child-transmission (MTCT/MTC), given the extraordinary volume of publicity around this matter. In this regard, we will concentrate on the drug "Nevirapine", which is said to be the most effective for this condition, the cheapest and the easiest to administer.

On HIV/AIDS treatment generally, we will only cite some comments made by people who should know what needs to be known about this matter, namely, the

Global estimates of hookworm prevalence by region. (Table 1)
Region	Population	Hookworm Infections	% Prevalence
Sub-Saharan Africa	512 million	140 million	27%
Latin America	441 million	135 million	31%
Middle East	503 million	96 million	19%
India	850 million	319 million	38%
China	1160 million	358 million	31%
Other Asia/Islands	654 million	250 million	38%
Total	4120 million	1297 million	31%

Age	AI/AN Rate/100,000	Rate/100,000 persons Total King Country	Relative difference
<1 year	1,272.5	547.9	+132%
1-14	54.8	16.8	+226%
15-24	90.9	68,5	-
25-44	337.1	132.8	+154%
Unintentional injury	91.1	30.6	+198%
45-64	622.0	489.7	+27%
65-84	3847.5	3495.6	-
85 and older	10493.8	14785.7	-

CASTRO HLONGWANE, CARAVANS, CATS, GEESE , FOOT & MOUTH AND STATISTICS

HIV/AIDS and the Struggle for the Humanisation of the African.

PRELUDE

PREFACE

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Global estimates of hookworm prevalence by region. (Table 1)

Age

AI/AN
Rate/100,000

Rate/100,000 persons
Total King Country

Relative difference

Water-borne

Blood, sex-borne disease

All mortality by poverty areas

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI