The Con Remains On

"...AIDS prevention has always been handicapped by politics. Nobody believes we all have AIDS, but many have bought into the "Everyone is at risk" nonsense that clearly works against targeting those truly at risk.

The entire science of epidemiology depends on identifying risk factors to ameliorate them. Epidemiolgoy got its start when London physician John Snow determined that cholera cases in his city clustered around a single water pump - and proceeded to end the epidemic by simply removing the pump handle.

Snow was lucky he didn't have to deal with activists carrying signs reading: "Water doesn't cause cholera; ignorance and prejudice cause cholera!"

Fewer than 39,000 Americans were diagnosed with AIDS in 2004 (latest data available), and fewer than 16,000 died from it. That's about one in 770 and one in 1,875 respectively. Fact is, almost everybody is safe from AIDS.

But of course, the focus of the Toronto conference is on international AIDS, which we all know is wiping whole continents off the map.

For example, a high Ugandan official said that within two years his nation will "be a desert." ABC News Nightline declared that within 12 years "50 million Africans may have died of AIDS."

Problem is, those predictions were made in 1986 and 1988.

Yet Uganda's population has doubled since 1985. Nightline's 50 million dead by the year 2000 proved to be 20 million in 2005, according to the U.N. estimate. Further, "In sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the largest burden of the AIDS epidemic, data also indicate that the HIV incidence rate has peaked in most countries," says the 2006 UNAIDS Report.

Since 1985, when Life magazine blared in huge red letters: "Now No One Is Safe from AIDS," activists have fought furiously against the idea that AIDS targets those who engage in particular behaviors. Yet, more than two decades later, AIDS in this country remains overwhelmingly a disease of homosexual males and intravenous drug users.

Yet the United Nations itself has historically grossly exaggerated the world AIDS threat. In 1998, it estimated that 12 percent of Rwandans aged 15 to 49 were infected; now it says it's only 3 percent. Whoops. On the other hand, other agencies had estimated a horrific 30 percent of Rwandans were infected. James Chin, a former U.N. official who made some of the earliest global HIV estimates, says such concocted figures are "pure advocacy."

Former President Bill Clinton told conference attendees that "It's difficult to imagine how the world can grow unless we tackle AIDS." In fact, population growth is fastest in areas hardest hit by AIDS.

As for the bizarre assertion that AIDS remains yet to be tackled, UNAIDS reports that 1.3 million people in low- and middle-income countries received antiretroviral therapy in 2004, up from a fifth that number in 2001. Donated blood is now screened in even the poorest countries. The level of AIDS testing and education in poorer nations has skyrocketed.

And worldwide AIDS spending, which averaged $1.7 billion in 2002-2004, reached $8.3 billion for 2005 and is slated to hit $10 billion in 2007.

The size of that pie, and the desire to have a slice of it, is all you need to know to understand how the Toronto conference could attract a stunning 24,000 attendees who have been rightly labeled "the AIDS industry." Nevertheless, insists UNAIDS, that $10 billion isn't nearly enough.

Even the current AIDS budget swamps spending on malaria and tuberculosis - which together kill about twice as many people each year as does AIDS. Antiretroviral therapy for AIDS cures no one - and, where it costs $300-$1,200 per year in the Third World, TB can be cured with $65 of medicine. And malaria in Africa and Asia can be prevented for a pittance by spraying DDT - yet environmental activists and the European Union have essentially blocked its use in areas that most need it..."

Clue #1: If you see Slick-Willy around there's a scam being run. AIDS is a homosexual/drug-user problem, and NOT something we need worry about, but that bit of unvarnished truth singles out one of the loony left's most favored minority, and the truth isn't coming out of Blowjob Bill's mouth anytime soon.

The diseases without a star are killing people at an alarming rate, but the money is going to HIV. Case closed, Katy bar the door, and don't let it hit you in the ass because that's the real world where lefties control the media and tell us all the news we need to make a decision just as they would.