Webloggin » World Health Organization: Threat of Heterosexual AIDS Pandemic Misdirected

That is misdirected, as in wrong. It also gets to the rub of critics that took exception with the education strategy by political organizations that tried to mainstream the aids threat instead of tackling the root causes of the disease front and center: gay sex and sharing of needles.

A quarter of a century after the outbreak of Aids, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has accepted that the threat of a global heterosexual pandemic has disappeared.

In the first official admission that the universal prevention strategy promoted by the major Aids organisations may have been misdirected, Kevin de Cock, the head of the WHO’s department of HIV/Aids said there will be no generalised epidemic of Aids in the heterosexual population outside Africa.

Dr De Cock, an epidemiologist who has spent much of his career leading the battle against the disease, said understanding of the threat posed by the virus had changed. Whereas once it was seen as a risk to populations everywhere, it was now recognised that, outside sub-Saharan Africa, it was confined to high-risk groups including men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and sex workers and their clients.

Dr De Cock said: “It is very unlikely there will be a heterosexual epidemic in other countries. Ten years ago a lot of people were saying there would be a generalised epidemic in Asia – China was the big worry with its huge population. That doesn’t look likely. But we have to be careful. As an epidemiologist it is better to describe what we can measure. There could be small outbreaks in some areas.”

Hat Tip Girl on the Right who says:

How on earth did the WHO ever get it into their heads that this was going to harm you and I? Well, they got it into their heads because there was money to be made. The more of us who jumped on board, the more of us who believed the hype, the more of us who would donate money and push for funding from world governments.

There is an astonishing admission to be seen in this article; one that suggests that critics were right all along.

Critics of the global Aids strategy complain that vast sums are being spent educating people about the disease who are not at risk, when a far bigger impact could be achieved by targeting high-risk groups and focusing on interventions known to work, such as circumcision, which cuts the risk of infection by 60 per cent, and reducing the number of sexual partners.

There were “elements of truth” in the criticism, Dr De Cock said. “You will not do much about Aids in London by spending the funds in schools. You need to go where transmission is occurring. It is true that countries have not always been good at that.”

But he rejected an argument put in The New York Times that only $30m (£15m) had been spent on safe water projects, far less than on Aids, despite knowledge of the risks that contaminated water pose.

“It sounds a good argument. But where is the scandal? That less than a third of Aids patients are being treated – or that we have never resolved the safe water scandal?”

One of the danger areas for the Aids strategy was among men who had sex with men. He said: ” We face a bit of a crisis [in this area]. In the industrialised world transmission of HIV among men who have sex with men is not declining and in some places has increased.

“In the developing world, it has been neglected. We have only recently started looking for it and when we look, we find it. And when we examine HIV rates we find they are high.

“It is astonishing how badly we have done with men who have sex with men. It is something that is going to have to be discussed much more rigorously.”

This is what I don’t get. Anti-establishment types on the left are misaligned with reality. They are only partially anti-establishment. Yet the parts that they have glommed onto are in reality the most factually devoid policies and beliefs that can be promoted. Whether or not it is aids, global warming, the economy or the now debunked “Bush Lied, People Died” meme, leftists get very selective when dismissing that which they don’t want to believe. What will it take to get these people to open their eyes?

My guess is that we are seeing a pattern. Next will be an admission that teaching abstinence to teens really does work (caveat, I imagine that abstinence is one of those things that is a product of environment. Strange how people who attack abstinence are the same ones promoting sexual behavior in a quest to undermine abstinence programs. It’s like having your AA director serving wine and beer before the meeting).

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