More De COCK AND BULL stuff and nonsense

In the face of undeniable facts about HIV/AIDS, cognitive dissonance and passionate defense of vested interests are eliciting from official sources statements that call for the talents of comedians in the tradition of Mort Sahl, Tom Lehrer, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, for appropriate commentary.

Kevin De Cock, for example, chief white-coated HIV/AIDS guru at the World Health Organization, said that “Ten years ago a lot of people were saying there would be a generalised epidemic in Asia . . .  That doesn’t look likely” [emphasis added] (Jeremy Laurence, “Threat of world Aids pandemic among heterosexuals is over, report admits”, Independent.co.uk, 8 June 2008 ).

What’s comical here is that De Cock and his cohorts at WHO and UNAIDS were themselves this “lot of people”, and that they were not only saying it but strenuously insisting on it, trumpeting it, repeating it incessantly and brooking no contradiction.

De Cock’s mention that Swaziland suffers an infection rate of  40% also deserves at least a snigger if not a belly laugh. He bemoans that fewer than one third of people in those African countries are getting the antiretroviral drugs they need. Of course even fewer were getting them until quite recently. Since Swaziland and other sub-Saharan countries have had these high rates for a decade or more in absence of treatment, there should by now be few people left alive there. Where then are all the corpses? Rian Malan (1) looked and couldn’t find them. And how did Africa’s population manage to continue to grow at a few percent per year despite all this carnage?

De Cock’s admission that HIV/AIDS is not going to spread outside Africa might have reflected his encounter with reality as co-author of the review article featured in HIV/AIDS ILLUSTRATES COGNITIVE DISSONANCE, 29 April 2008. A colored graph in that article incorporates the assertion that HIV is disseminated by quite different means in different parts of the world. In sub-Saharan Africa, marital sex is indicted for more than 50% of the spread while commercial sex is responsible for only about 10%, whereas in Eastern Europe about 85% of transmission is owing to injection by drug addicts and only about 10% is ascribed to each of “casual sex” and sex between men—no noticeable amount from marital sex or from commercial sex, which latter is indicted in other parts of the world for between 10% and 20% of transmission. Aren’t some of the drug addicts in the former Warsaw pact countries married? Don’t they have sex with their wives? Are there no sex workers there? Don’t the injecting drug addicts there ever have sex with anyone, or do they have only homo-sex?

In both Latin American and the Caribbean, sex between men is supposed to be responsible for about 60% of the spread—but the overall rate in Latin America is twice that in the Caribbean. Is the proportion of gay men in the Latin American population twice that in the Caribbean?

One shouldn’t in any case speak of any spread at all in those regions, given that there has been no reported increase for at least a decade. UNAIDS in its Global Reports and Updates reported for HIV in Latin America, 0.5% for both 1997 and 2007; in the Caribbean, 1.9% in 1997 and only 1.0% for 2007.

Mother-to-child transmission, according to that review article, accounts for 15% of all transmission in sub-Saharan Africa but is barely noticeable in Latin America and the Caribbean and is not even mentioned for Asia and Eastern Europe. Yet in Asia, 25% of transmission is supposed to be via marital sex. How does it come about that all those married women infected via marital sex never pass their infection on to their newborns?

Someone like De Cock who collaborated in authorship of this review article would, I suggest, find unbidden doubts making themselves felt about the whole business of HIV/AIDS epidemics; albeit those doubts might express themselves only in dreams—or nightmares.

Expressing such doubts in the light of day, and from within the World Health Organization, is tantamount to treason. No surprise, then, that WHO and UNAIDS quickly issued a joint “correction” (“Correction to AIDS story in Independent article 8 June 2008; Joint Note for the Media WHO/UNAIDS - Wed, 11 Jun 2008”).

This correction reiterates that “the global HIV epidemic is by no means over. . . . AIDS remains the leading cause of death in Africa. . . . Worldwide, HIV is still largely driven by heterosexual transmission. The majority of new infections in sub-Saharan Africa occur through heterosexual transmission. We have also seen a number of generalized epidemics outside of Africa, such as in Haiti and Papua New Guinea.”

But this in no way speaks to, let alone contradicts, De Cock’s admission that there are not and will not be heterosexual epidemics in the Americas, Asia, Australia, or Europe. That takes all the wind out of the sails of this “correction”; and the last assertion in this press release deserves to be laughed off the stage:
“AIDS remains the leading infectious disease challenge in global health. To suggest otherwise is irresponsible and misleading.”

As already pointed out in our earlier post (WHO SAYS that WE’VE BEEN VERY WRONG about HIV and AIDS? (Clue: WHO = World Health Organization), 10 June 2008 ), numerous official sources have presented evidence over and over again that more people even in Africa die of malaria and other scourges traditionally present there, than die of AIDS.

Peter Piot, collaborator with de Cock in creating “the Belgian disease” of HIV/AIDS in Africa, seems to have acted with better self-preservation instincts than De Cock: “In a little noticed statement in April, Piot said he would step down when his term ended at the end of this year” (“June 11, 2008: First shoe at UN drops: Peter Piot resigns”  and “Liam Scheff at GNN: The Aids machine grinds to a halt” ). When a Director of UNAIDS and Under-Secretary of the United Nations steps down with a “little noticed statement”, something is awry. Why not the traditional press-release citing his desire to spend more time with his family after having accomplished all that he had aimed to accomplish? That no successor was announced amplifies the smell of fish here, in  its indication of haste and confusion rather than orderly transition at the normal end of a term of service.

The cat is out of the bag. HIV is not fueling heterosexually transmitted epidemics—at least not in most of the world. Outside sub-Saharan Africa, heterosexual epidemics are apparent only among other dark-skinned people, according to WHO/UNAIDS in Haiti and Papua New Guinea. It’s just shameful what those black people do in the way of sex—particularly those married ones in sub-Saharan Africa, see TO AVOID HIV INFECTION, DON’T GET MARRIED, 18 November; HIV/AIDS ABSURDITIES AND WORSE, 9 DECEMBER 2007; B***S*** about HIV from ACADEME via THE PRESS, 4 March 2008.
———————-

Citation:
(1) Rian Malan, “AIDS in Africa: In search of the truth” Rolling Stone Magazine, 22 November 2001; “Africa isn’t dying of Aids”, The Spectator (London), 14 December 2003.

ANTHONY FAUCI EXPLAINS RACIAL DISPARITIES IN “HIV/AIDS”

(Several references below — euphemism, minority, macacas — are more fully explained in the earlier post, HIV/AIDS IS INESCAPABLY RACIST, 19 May 2008 ).

Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, has appeared often on the public-radio Diane Rehm show. For example, on 27 November 2007, he was introduced thus (“HIV/AIDS Worldwide”, transcript by Soft Scribe LLC):

“Racial and ethnic minorities continue to be disproportionately affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic here in the U.S. New figures show that African Americans are among those who are most at risk. Here in Washington, D.C. 1 in 20 residents is thought to have the HIV, and 1 in 50 to have AIDS.”

Once again (see HIV/AIDS IS INESCAPABLY RACIST), that euphemism “minority”. Already the following sentence shows that actually meant is black. (In Washington, DC, blacks comprise a majority of the population.)

Fauci said that “in the District, about 37 - 39 percent [of ‘HIV-positive’ results from] heterosexual transmission, 20-some-odd percent men who have sex with men, and about 14 percent injection-drug users. . . . [This] resembles in some respects . . . what we see in third world countries. And the confluence of an inner city area with poverty, lack of healthcare access, injection-drug use which keeps a core of infection in the city, and then that’s spread heterosexually and then from there you get secondary and tertiary heterosexual spread” [emphasis added].

Once more: “complex social mixing patterns” (see HIV/AIDS IS INESCAPABLY RACIST) are postulated in these “minority” communities whose conditions happen to resemble those in Third-World countries (euphemism for sub-Saharan Africa).

Another remark by Fauci illustrates how content the mainstream is to assert as fact what cannot be known: “there is a disproportional amount of transmission from people who do not know that they are infected”.
STOP.
THINK.
They don’t know they’re infected. No one told them. Why not? Because no one else knows, either.
What Fauci asserts could only be assumed, not actually known; and it is also and first assumed that there’s a short period of undetectable infection but high infectivity just after being infected; because that’s the only way to cope with the undeniable fact that the average probability of apparently transmitting the “HIV-positive” condition is only about 1 per 1000 acts of unprotected intercourse, far too low a probability to sustain any sort of epidemic (14 May 2008, SEX, RACE, and “HIV”).

(”Don’t know they’re infected” reminded me of the study that found “Nine in 10 students who experienced hazing . . . did not think they had been hazed”; Chronicle of Higher Education 21 March 2008, p. A21)

Fauci again: “disproportional amount, more of poverty, lack of access to medical care, a lack of access to counseling for prevention, proximity in locations in inner city for example where there are pockets of injection-drug use . . . . among blacks … being gay and having gay sex is not as accepted … as it is in the society as a whole”.

Again: it’s so but it ain’t “their” fault.

More Fauci: “a misconception that because women get infected in this community that they are leading promiscuous lives. That’s certainly not the case in general. Very often it’s someone who is being monogamous with someone who happens to be infected”.

“Very often”: How often must a monogamous woman have sex with an infected partner to become positive, when the probability is about 1 per 1000? James Chin, epidemiologist, says the contrary. To produce the alleged levels and rapidity of spread, 20-40% of people must be engaged in multiple concurrent relationships with frequent partner change (4 March 2008, B***S*** about HIV from ACADEME via THE PRESS). Doesn’t that qualify as quite promiscuous?

Over and again, Fauci pretends to believe that it’s not their fault, it’s their culture — “very often women want their male sexual partner to use a condom, but they won’t do it. And in certain cultures it is not easy for a woman to assert herself and say, ‘No, this is the way it’s going to be. We don’t have a condom, I’m not having sex.’ They can wind up getting abused as it were. Those are the kind of cultural barriers that we need to overcome” (emphasis added).
(1) How does Fauci know that this happens “very often”?
(2) Again it’s those macaca cultures, which are apparently ensconced just as powerfully in Washington, DC, among people whose ancestors left Africa many generations ago, as among those still now living in Africa.

Fauci: “68 percent of the infections in the world occur in southern Africa. . . . it has to do with cultural and other factors. Poverty, dissolution of the family units, post-colonization where people would leave the family and go and work in mines, go on the trucking routes, get exposed to commercial sex workers, bring the infection back to their family, infect their wives, lack of prevention modalities. . . . some very good studies about sexual activities that in certain cultures, including those in Southern Africa there is what’s called overlapping concurrent multiple sexual partners. If you have a society that has sequential sexual partners, it is much less likely to have explosive transmission than when you have people who have simultaneously multiple sexual partners that you share.
…
there is a degree of disenfranchisement . . . There is discrimination . . . communities in which there is crime, there is murder . . . .”

Once more, it’s those other cultures that do sex differently than “we” do; and those cultures in Washington DC and in southern Africa share the common factor of people with dark-hued skin. As documented in my book, The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory, Native Americans suffer even more than African Americans from violent crime and disenfranchisement and abuse of alcohol and drugs, but their rate of testing “HIV-positive” is far below that of blacks and not much higher than among whites. It’s the biological race that matters, not the “minority” “culture”.

Note once again the asserting, as fact, matters that are speculative. “Overlapping concurrent multiple sexual partners” have been postulated to explain spread of “HIV” among heterosexuals. I await citation of those “very good studies” that actually found that sort of situation which — recall James Chin’s calculations (14 May 2008, SEX, RACE, and “HIV”) — require 20-40% of adults to be behaving in this fashion if “HIV” is to spread. Such a rate of promiscuity would be evident to the most casual observer, yet it has not been reported by any observers.

Fauci virtually confessed his belief that race and cultural determinants of sexual behavior go together:

FAUCI: it’s very difficult when you have societies whose cultural approach to life has been going on for centuries that you are going to all of a sudden change sexual practices.
REHM: But I don’t think we ought to single out sub-Saharan Africa.
FAUCI: No, not, of course not, anywhere.
REHM: I mean, here in Washington –
REHM: — that kind of promiscuous sex –
FAUCI: Right, and –
REHM: — is going on.
FAUCI: Right, exactly.

*************

Anthony Fauci and many others, including those who speak for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, appear willing to ascribe racial disparities in “HIV-positive” to “cultural” factors, even though those disparities transcend all social milieus and all geographic boundaries and all age groups and are seen in both sexes. Would they also ascribe to “cultural” factors characteristic of Caucasians that whites always test “HIV-positive” anywhere from 50% to 300% more often than Asians? Could it be that Caucasians are inherently more given to “multiple concurrent sexual relationships” than Asians are?

RACE and SEXUAL BEHAVIOR: STEREOTYPE vs. FACT

Racial disparities in testing “HIV-positive” are explained — by proponents of HIV/AIDS theory, that is — as stemming from the harmful effects of racial discrimination, which mire the discriminated-against in circumstances rife with drug abuse and sexual promiscuity. That runs counter to a goodly body of actual evidence that undercuts this type of explanation; and it also draws on stereotypes not readily distinguishable from racist beliefs (see 19 May, HIV/AIDS THEORY IS INESCAPABLY RACIST).

Some of the evidence confounding the stereotypes is cited in my book (p. 77):

“As a matter of actual fact, research in the context of HIV/AIDS has not revealed any racial differences in sexual behavior. Among drug users, no significant differences in behavior by race were found as to numbers of sexual partners, frequency of intercourse, numbers of sexual partners who were IDUs, numbers of non-IDU sexual partners, prostitution, or intercourse with people then or later diagnosed with AIDS (Friedman et al. 1987). Samuel and Winkelstein (1987) found no significant racial differences in behavior among gay men in San Francisco, and they concluded that the black-to-white ratio of . . . [“HIV-positive”] could not be explained by differences in major risk factors. The San Francisco Department of Health (1986) found no differences between races as to anal intercourse . . . . Bausell et al. (1986) found white Americans less likely than black Americans to take protective measures during sex. Historical data from Zimbabwe records a higher incidence of venereal disease among the white South Africa Police and the British Armed Services than among the Native Police or among Africans in general (McCulloch 1999, 205, 207). Contemporaneous surveys have found that levels of sexual activity in general populations in Africa are comparable to those in North America and Europe (Brewer et al. 2003; Gisselquist 2002).”

It has become fashionable to assert that black women in the United States are at particular risk because of black men “on the down low” (indulging secretly in male-with-male sex), becoming “HIV-positive”, then transmitting that to their female partners. But here again, the evidence doesn’t sustain the speculation:

“The lifestyle referenced by the term the DL is neither new nor limited to blacks, and sufficient data linking it to HIV/AIDS disparities currently are lacking. Common perceptions about the DL reflect social constructions of black sexuality as generally excessive, deviant, diseased, and predatory. [“social construction” means stemming from human interpretation rather than from the objective reality] Research targeting black sexual behavior that ignores these constructions may unwittingly reinforce them” (Ford et al., Ann Epidemiol 17 [2007] 209-16).

An illustration of such unwitting reinforcement is one of the CDC’s statements:
“The phenomenon of men on the down low has gained much attention in recent years; however, there are no data to confirm or refute publicized accounts of HIV risk behavior associated with these men. What is clear is that women, men, and children of minority races and ethnicities are disproportionately affected by HIV and AIDS” (emphasis added; unchanged since at least March 2006; www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/aa/resources/qa/downlow.htm, accessed 11 May 2008).

Another common and politically correct gambit (attempting to explain away that blacks always test “HIV-positive” more often than others) seizes on the high incarceration rate of young black men, particularly from inner-city regions, and combines that with the shibboleth that prisons are a hotbed of “HIV” transmission (for example, Johnson & Rafael 2006). But once again the speculation goes contrary to fact, because “actual observations in prisons have failed to reveal transmission of HIV there (Brown 2006; Horsburgh et al. 1990; Kelley et al. 1986)” (p. 79 in The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory).

In South Africa, blood from black donors was, for some time, being destroyed as “unsafe” because it tested “HIV-positive” so much more often than blood from people of mixed race or from South-East Indians or whites (p. 75 in The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory). However, since testing was available for the blood, this blanket rule surely owed something to underlying and pre-existing racist beliefs. Racist preconceptions in the 1980s among HIV/AIDS workers in Africa — some of whom are still prominent in HIV/AIDS research nowadays — were described, long ago and in detail, by the Chirimuutas (AIDS, Africa and Racism, Free Association Books, London [UK] 1987/89). Konotey-Ahulu, a distinguished Ghanaian physician and medical researcher, also exposed the lack of evidence for an African origin of HIV/AIDS in a book (What is AIDS? 1989/96, ISBN 0-9515442-3-3) I described in a review as “flavored by a traditional attitude toward what constitutes acceptable behavior” and displaying “what used to be called good breeding and proper upbringing”, exploding by personal example all sorts of notions about “those Africans” (Journal of Scientific Exploration 21 [2007] 206-9).

That blacks always test “HIV-positive” more often than others simply cannot be explained by differences in behavior:

“AIDS researchers don’t have a solid explanation for why black women in America have such a shockingly high prevalence of HIV infection. . . . injection drug use, a particularly effective way to spread HIV, is actually lower in black women than in white women” — Jon Cohen, “A silent epidemic”, 27 October 2004, www.slate.com/id/2108724/.

“Black young adults . . . are at high risk even when their behaviors are normative. Factors other than individual risk behaviors and covariates appear to account for racial disparities” — Halfors et al., Sexual and drug behavior patterns and HIV and STD racial disparities: the need for new directions, Am J Public Health 97 [2007] 125-32.

“HIV-positive gay men are more likely than HIV-positive black African heterosexual men and women to engage in sexual behaviour that presents a risk of HIV transmission. . . . There were no significant differences between white gay men and those from other ethnic background in terms of sexual behaviour” (Rod Dawson, 5 January 2007. AIDSmap news, summarizing Elford et al., “Sexual behaviour of people living with HIV in London: implications for HIV transmission”, AIDS 21 [suppl. 1, 2007] S63-70).

“According to Robert Janssen, director of CDC’s Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, blacks do not engage in riskier sexual behavior compared with other groups, but the population’s HIV/AIDS infection rates mean that blacks who have sex with other blacks are more likely to get HIV than people in other ethnic groups” — (emphasis added; Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 9 March 2007).
Perhaps Janssen has never heard of the chicken-&-egg conundrum? How did the infection rate in the black community become higher than in others in the first place, given that the first affected groups in the USA were predominantly white gay men?

That ill-founded grasping-at-straws argument is not unique with Janssen:
“racial disparities in seroprevalence were . . . not attributable to disparities in risk factors such as STD, bisexuality, or acceptance of HIV testing. This finding suggests that the observed differences may reflect racial differences in the background seroprevalences” — Torian et al., Sex Transm Dis. 29 [2002] 73-8.
I suppose one must sympathize with people trying desperately to explain the unexplainable. This “explanation” is a tautology: blacks test “HIV-positive” more often than others because blacks already test “HIV-positive” more often than others.

“Paradoxically, potentially risky sex and drug-using behaviors were generally reported most frequently by whites and least frequently by blacks. . . . Understanding racial/ethnic disparities in HIV risk requires information beyond the traditional risk behavior and partnership type distinctions” — Harawa et al., “Associations of race/ethnicity with HIV prevalence and HIV-related behaviors among young men who have sex with men in 7 urban centers in the United States”, JAIDS 35 [2004] 526-36.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found, in one study, that “Black gay and bisexual men . . . [were] more likely to engage in safe-sex practices than their white counterparts. . . . ‘Across all studies, there were no overall differences [by race] in reported unprotected receptive sex or any unprotected anal intercourse . . . among young MSM — those ages 15 to 29 — African-Americans were one third less likely than whites to report in engaging in unprotected anal intercourse’ . . . . Black gay or bisexual men were also ‘36 percent less likely than whites to report having as many sex partners as white MSM’ . . . . Blacks in the study were also less likely to use recreational drugs, such as methamphetamine or cocaine, compared to whites” (“One-third of HIV-infected gay men have unsafe sex: CDC”, HealthDay News, 3 December 2007).

*******************

Black people always test “HIV-positive” more often than others.

Black people do not differ greatly from others in their sexual behavior. Where they do, it is through behaving somewhat more responsibly than white people.

The racial disparities in testing “HIV-positive” cannot be explained by differential behavior: blacks always test positive much more often, but their sexual behavior does not constitute a corresponding risk.

THEREFORE: Testing “HIV-positive” must indicate something other than a sexually acquired condition. Testing “HIV-positive” does not mark infection by a sexually transmitted agent. Rather, testing “HIV-positive” is a very non-specific indication of some sort of physiological stress; see, for example, REGULAR AS CLOCKWORK: HIV, THE TRULY UNIQUE “INFECTION”, 1 April 2008; “HIV DISEASE” IS NOT AN ILLNESS, 19 March 2008; UNRAVELING HIV/AIDS, 8 March 2008; HIV DEMOGRAPHICS FURTHER CONFIRMED: HIV IS NOT SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED, 26 February 2008; TWINS ATTRACT THEIR MOTHER’S HIV, 12 January 2008; HOW TO TEST THEORIES (HIV/AIDS THEORY FLUNKS), 7 January 2008.

HIV/AIDS THEORY IS INESCAPABLY RACIST

Proponents of HIV/AIDS theory are on the classical horns of a syllogistic dilemma:
1. Racial disparities as to testing “HIV-positive” are pervasive, constant, and universally acknowledged. It is undeniable that people of recent African ancestry test “HIV-positive” many times more often than others, in all social groups and economic circumstances. Testing “HIV-positive” goes with recent African ancestry as inevitably as does dark-hued skin.
2. Under HIV/AIDS theory, the tendency to become “HIV-positive” is ascribed primarily to types of behavior that are widely disdained.
3. Thereby such disdained behavior is linked inevitably to race.

That conclusion is contrary to what’s nowadays well known about the independence of behavior and genotype, and it is blatantly racist. Point 3., what the syllogism presents as demonstrated, being ignorant as well as racist (but then racism is in any case a sub-category of ignorance) means that at least one of points 1. and 2. is wrong. Which one?

The evidence for 1. is, as already stated, undisputed. Many illustrative sources are cited in The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory. Others have been added in many earlier posts (HIV AND SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASE: IT JUST ISN’T SO, 28 November; “HIV DISEASE” IS NOT AN ILLNESS, 19 March 2008; REGULAR AS CLOCKWORK: HIV, THE TRULY UNIQUE “INFECTION”, 1 April 2008; HIV: THE VIRUS THAT DISCRIMINATES BY RACE, 11 April 2008; HIV: A RACE-DISCRIMINATING SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED VIRUS!, 16 April 2008; DECONSTRUCTING HIV/AIDS in “SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA” and “THE CARIBBEAN”, 21 April 2008 ). Perhaps the most striking demonstrations that it is biological, physical, race that determines rates of testing “HIV-positive” are the difference between Hispanics on the East and West coasts in the United States, and that in South Africa the “coloreds”, of mixed racial ancestry, test positive at rates intermediate between those seen with blacks and with whites.

Since point 1. is correct, and point 3. is wrong, therefore point 2. must also be wrong.

Indeed, the evidence against point 2. is just as solid as the evidence for point 1.; for sources and discussion, see WHAT “HIV” IS NOT: IT’S NOT SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED, 6 January 2008 and Chapter 4 in The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory.

What’s so difficult to accept, to comprehend, to explain, is that the conventional wisdom has ignored this evidence for so long and with such passionate determination.

In order not to admit that point 2. — that “HIV” is sexually transmitted — is in error , it is necessary to recast point 3. in a manner that masks its erroneous and racist nature. How to do this?

“The promiscuity, blind sexual trust and intravenous drug use that gave life to this incurable disease is just as prevalent today as when former NBA great Magic Johnson gave HIV/AIDS a recognizable face. Black people in Mississippi make up 70 percent of the new HIV/AIDS cases; black women make up 49 percent. No major study exists to tell us why, so we’re left with theories that have no scientific foundation” (Ronnie Agnew, “HIV’s new target: Black women”, Clarion-Ledger [Jackson, MS], 23 April 2006).

Political correctness offers a working model for obfuscating the matter: Accept that undesirable behavior is linked to race, but assert that this is only because race has meant discrimination and its after-effects of deprivation, poverty, lack of health care, etc. In other words, “their” behavior is admittedly despicable, but it’s not really their fault.

Thus, as Potterat pointed out recently, there has been “evidence and speculation that epidemic trajectories are shaped by demographic, social, economic and network configurations” (“Blind spots in the epidemiology of HIV in black Americans”, Int J STD & AIDS 19 [2008] 1-3).

The currently fashionable parlance among HIV/AIDS experts is “multiple concurrent relationships”. That abstract mouthful fails to reveal the magnitude of sexual activity required to explain the spread of HIV: 20-40% of the population must be having sex with several people during the same short period of time and all the people involved must be changing partners every weeks (B***S*** about HIV from ACADEME via THE PRESS, 4 March 2008). A colloquial description of such behavior allegedly found among Africans and African Americans might be, “Those macacas screw around in ways that us civilized folks don’t”.

(For the expression “macaca” I am indebted to Republican Senator and former Governor of Virginia, George Allen, whose use of it on a public occasion is widely thought to have spelled the demise of his campaign for the presidential nomination of his party.)

*****************

In any case, no one attempts to deny the statistical facts. Under HIV/AIDS theory, those facts must be interpreted in racist fashion, relying on racist stereotypes as to sexual behavior. The mainstream attempt to hide that inescapable fact, to obfuscate it, harnesses nice-sounding, politically correct, words like “cultural differences” and references to “minorities” in relation to “poverty”, “discrimination”, lack of access to health case, and the like. What that amounts to is admitting that “they”, the macacas, do behave that way, but it isn’t really their individual or collective fault. Here are some actual examples of this rhetoric:

“The marked racial and ethnic differences in HIV prevalence, even among persons treated in the same clinic, suggests that both behavioral norms and complex social mixing patterns within racial and ethnic groups are important determinants of HIV transmission risk” (emphasis added; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, HIV/AIDS surveillance report for 1992, p. 37).
Translating from jargon: “behavioral norms” = regarded as acceptable behavior; “complex social mixing patterns” = those who behave improperly are not sexually segregated from others “within racial and ethnic groups”.

Nor has the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its belief since then, as they informed me in 2005: “The ‘characteristic differentiation by race’ that you note is compatible with a behavioral explanation” (emphasis in original, Shari Steinberg [Divisions of HIV/AIDS Prevention, CDC], letter to Henry Bauer, 19 May 2005).

“The phenomenon of men on the down low has gained much attention in recent years; however, there are no data to confirm or refute publicized accounts of HIV risk behavior associated with these men. What is clear is that women, men, and children of minority races and ethnicities are disproportionately affected by HIV and AIDS … .
What steps is CDC taking to address the down low?
CDC and its many research partners have several projects in the field that are exploring the HIV-related sexual risks of men, including men who use the term down low to refer to themselves. The results of these studies will be published in medical journals and circulated through press releases in the next few years as each study is concluded and the data analyzed. CDC has also funded several projects that provide HIV education, counseling, and testing in minority racial and ethnic communities. CDC’s research and on-the-ground HIV prevention efforts will continue as more information about the demographics and HIV risk behaviors of men who do and men who do not identify with the down low becomes available” (emphasis added; unchanged since at least March 2006, accessed 11 May 2008).

Note the weasel-word “minority” used here, as so often in similar contexts. It doesn’t mean minority, it’s a euphemism for “black”. Asian-Americans are less affected by “HIV” than are whites, and at 4.5% of the population they surely qualify as a “minority”, certainly by comparison with about 13% African Americans. Perhaps the smallest recognized minority group in the United States is comprised of Native Americans, who are affected by “HIV” almost as little as are white Americans. The persistent usage of “minority” is intended to mask the fact that it is blacks who are so disproportionately affected, and simultaneously to suggest — in condescending and demeaning terms — that it isn’t their fault, because it’s so well known that “minorities” are devastatingly discriminated against.

It’s hard to believe that this usage of “minority” is other than deliberate. Its use implies quite clearly that the user accepts that “black” is the determining factor. The only way to explain that under HIV/AIDS theory is by differences in sexual behavior. But one mustn’t say that, even though it is evidently believed by those who resort to these euphemisms. In other words, these statements are made by people who harbor stereotypically racist beliefs — albeit they would likely be horrified if made aware of that subconscious or suppressed belief.

SEX, RACE, and “HIV”

Proponents of HIV/AIDS theory claim that purported epidemics of “HIV” reflect primarily sexual behavior (except in Eastern Europe, where 85% of it is ascribed to drug abuse — see HIV/AIDS ILLUSTRATES COGNITIVE DISSONANCE, 29 April 2008 — implying a truly inconceivably prodigious sharing of infected needles).

Everywhere in the world, people test “HIV-positive” according to their race. People of African ancestry test positive far more often than others. Asians always test positive least frequently. Caucasians, Native Americans, and non-black Hispanics are in between, but much closer to Asians than to Africans.

Therefore, the orthodox view as to HIV/AIDS postulates, implicitly but inescapably, that members of different racial groups display characteristically different, race-determined sexual behavior.

So egregious is this assertion that I would have thought it sufficient, in and of itself, to disabuse anyone and everyone of the notion that “HIV” could possibly be a sexually transmitted agent. Consider and compare the furor over an oft-claimed association of IQ and race. The claim led to excruciatingly detailed dissection of what IQ tests actually measure. Even those who claim that there is an association between race and IQ also acknowledge that it is only probabilistic, not fully determinant (typically, heredity is said to be responsible for only about half of the variations in IQ). If there is indeed such an association of race and IQ, one could at least speculate about a possible physical or physiological and therefore genetic basis for it, by analogy with the folklore — favored by devotees of table tennis — that Asians tend to have faster reflexes, and that faster reflexes make for better IQ-test scores. But in the purported association of testing “HIV-positive” and race, no careful dissection of what the “HIV” tests measure has been carried through (except, of course, by HIV/AIDS rethinkers). In particular, it has never been shown that testing “HIV-positive” denotes active infection, as the orthodoxy maintains. Indeed, there’s a substantial prize ($25,000, plus a matching amount to charity) awaiting anyone who can produce a publication proving that “HIV-positive” means active infection (http://www.aliveandwell.org/, May 2007 under “News and Updates”). There is an even larger prize for proof of the very existence of “HIV”: the Michael Verney-Elliott Memorial Prize of £50,000 .

As to whether sexual behavior might be determined definitively by race-associated genetics, I am not aware that anyone has been so foolish as to suggest it explicitly. Behavior is determined by culture, learning, environment, within very wide limits set by human genetics. Sexual mores and sexual practices have changed dramatically over short periods of time in several individual cultures without any change in racial composition of the populations expressing those cultures. Monogamy and polygamy have been practiced at times within cultures whose members belong to different racial groups. The notion that any form of behavior is directly determined by race has been thoroughly undermined by understanding and knowledge accumulated in anthropology, sociology, developmental biology, psychology, and so on. Nevertheless, the orthodox view of HIV/AIDS implies such an association, for the racial disparities in testing “HIV-positive” are at least as firmly reproducible as anything else about HIV/AIDS.

Not only does HIV/AIDS theory incorporate by clear implication the extraordinary claim that sexual behavior is characteristic of race, the sexual behavior it ascribes to Africans is implausible in the extreme.

Since the average probability of apparently transmitting “HIV” is about 1 per 1000, to produce an epidemic would seem to call for extensive and incessant orgies, a high rate of intercourse among continually changing sexual partners. In order to save the hypothesis of sexual transmission in the face of this implausible scenario, the speculation was ventured long ago (Anderson & May, Nature 333 [1988] 514-9) — and has since become generally accepted without proof — that when a person is first infected, there might ensue a short period of weeks, at most months, during which the infectivity must be much higher than 1 per 1000.

However, the highest estimates for this putative initial infectivity allowed by actual data on apparent transmission are only 1/50 to 1/250 (Cohen & Pilcher, Journal of Infectious Diseases 191 [2005] 1391-3). Such a rate still requires prodigious feats of sexual promiscuity to explain the levels of “HIV infection” reported for sub-Saharan Africa, which are greater than 20%, remember, sometimes even above 35%, in Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe (21 April 2008, DECONSTRUCTING HIV/AIDS in “SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA” and “THE CARIBBEAN”).

James Chin, former epidemiologist for California and later for the World Health Organization, has carried out the requisite calculations (The AIDS Pandemic: The collision of epidemiology with political correctness, Radcliffe 2007): “epidemic HIV transmission requires a very high level of HIV risk behaviors” (pp. 44, 45). To achieve an epidemic spread over a period of “many years”, 20-40% of adults must have “multiple concurrent relationships” — several sexual partners at the same time, changing to new partners weekly or monthly, totaling to tens of different partners over the course of each year (p. 64, Table 5.1). (Chin does not seem specifically to consider the postulated short periods of higher infectivity. However, doing so would then require even more rapid change of partners to produce an epidemic since the window of opportunity for transmission is so brief.)

That, then — according to the official view — is what must have been going on in “sub-Saharan Africa” for many years. Also on the official view, as one travels from south to north one would observe the level of sexual activity steadily decreasing, until in North Africa promiscuity is at quite a low level, comparable to that in the civilized regions of the developed world; see the maps in DECONSTRUCTING HIV/AIDS in “SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA” and “THE CARIBBEAN”, 21 April 2008.

These staggering estimates, 20-40% of adults in multiple concurrent partner-changing relationships, are not usually cited, perhaps because they are so truly not worthy of belief. Instead, what HIV/AIDS theory implies — actually demands — is masked by abstract jargon not translated into concrete quantitative scenarios: it’s just said typically that the HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa results primarily from multiple concurrent relationships among heterosexuals in overlapping networks of partners. That sort of longwinded discourse in sociological jargon allows lay people’s eyes to glaze over and to defer to the experts who surely must know what they’re talking about. But the concrete fact behind that abstract jargon remains what Chin calculated: between 20% and 40% of adults having sex with several partners during the same period of time, all of them changing those partners every few weeks. It boggles the mind. Try to imagine that in your neighborhood: between 20% and 40% of men would have several mistresses, changing them every few weeks or months for new ones, and the women would be no less promiscuous. Just about everyone would have to be doing it, and certainly everyone would know about it.

Moreover, that degree of sexual activity would surely be causing to spread also the commonly known sexually transmitted infections (STIs or STDs) — gonorrhea, syphilis, chlamydia, etc. Those are transmitted with probabilities that are far greater, ten times higher or more, than that of 1 per 50, the highest short-period rate postulated for HIV. Wherever “HIV” is spreading, therefore, the population should have been absolutely swamped by the common STDs. They are not. This in itself offers direct observational proof that HIV is not sexually transmitted, proof available to anyone who looks even cursorily at the evidence.

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Now that HIV/AIDS in the United States is acknowledged to have become a disease of black communities, similar feats of sexual activity as postulated for Africa have to be imagined there as well. A high rate of “multiple concurrent relationships” has indeed been offered explicitly as partial explanation for the purported epidemics now said to be endangering, in particular, young black women, notably in the Southeast and in Washington city, DC; see, among many available examples, Kulik et al., American Journal of Public Health 85 (1995) 1119-22; Hammett et al., Sexually Transmitted Diseases 33 (2006, July suppl.) 817-22; Adimora et al., Annals of Epidemiology 14 (#3, 2004) 155-60.

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The racial disparities in testing “HIV-positive” are clearly, obviously, inescapably incompatible with HIV/AIDS theory. If “HIV” were sexually transmitted, then the racial disparities in “HIV-positive” would mean that human racial groups differ characteristically and drastically in their sexual behavior and mores. Furthermore, if “HIV” were sexually transmitted, then wherever there is “HIV”, there would be vastly greater incidence of gonorrhea, syphilis, chlamydia, herpes, etc.

The notion that “HIV” is a sexually transmitted infection is simply unsustainable in light of the actual data.