ANOTHER STRIKING SUCCESS AGAINST HIV/AIDS IN AFRICA

I noted some time ago (NOTEWORTHY SUCCESSES AGAINST AIDS IN AFRICA, 4 December 2007) that several African countries (Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe) were able to decrease the prevalence of HIV more than could be accounted for by deaths. That’s just another of the many mysteries posed by HIV/AIDS theory. Infection by HIV is said to be permanent. Therefore, if the overall rate of infection in a country decreases, that can only be through removal of infected individuals through death or emigration—removal of a larger number than the number of new infections.

(An alternative explanation, of course, is that “HIV-positive” is neither permanent nor a sign of infection by a virus. But that simple explanation is beyond the pale.)

Rwanda offers another such nail in the coffin of HIV/AIDS theory:

“Rwanda in mass circumcision drive” (BBC, 22 January 2008 )
”Figures from the World Bank last year put the prevalence of Aids in the country at about 3%, down from 11% in 2000.”

So at least 8% of the population must have died from HIV/AIDS during seven or eight years, say 1% per year. (“At least” because it assumes no new infections during that time.) The total population is a little less than 10,000,000. Therefore about 100,000 a year must have died from HIV/AIDS.

The CIA Fact Book gives the overall death rate in Rwanda as about 15 per 1000. For the population of 10 million, this is 150,000 per year. If there were 100,000 deaths from HIV/AIDS, then deaths from all other causes would have been only 50,000, or 5 per 1000 for the population as a whole. Such a “natural” death rate of 5 per 1000, however, is impossibly lower than that in the countries enjoying the longest lifespan: overall death rates are 10.3 per 1000 in Sweden, about 9 in Japan, 8.3 in the USA, 7.9 in Canada, 7.6 in Australia.

But perhaps 100,000 didn’t die each year from HIV disease; after all, the CIA Fact Book also gives the number of HIV/AIDS deaths for 2003 as 22,000.

Perhaps 78,000 HIV-positive Rwandans (100,000 minus 22,000) became spontaneously HIV-negative each year?
No, we’re told that’s impossible (even though there are plenty of reports of spontaneous seroreversion, see for instance HIV “INFECTION” DISAPPEARS SPONTANEOUSLY, 22 January 2008)

Perhaps the HIV-positive rates reported by the World Bank were wrong by something like a factor of about 5?
Well, if so, then the policies regarding HIV/AIDS that have been followed by the World Bank and other such prestigious organizations are based on entirely wrong numbers.

Perhaps HIV/AIDS numbers issued by official bodies shouldn’t be taken too seriously?
Indeed they should not; see Russian statistics in HIV NONSENSE: TODAY AND EVERY DAY, 22 November 2007; HIV DOUBLETHINK, 27 November 2007; HIV/AIDS: NUMBERS THAT DON’T ADD UP, 29 November; WORLD AIDS DAY . . ., 22 December 2007.

Perhaps numbers from the CIA Fact Book should not be taken seriously? After all, it reports that the Rwandan population grew at an estimated rate of 2.766% (not, in other words [or numbers] a rate of 2.767%, or of 2.765%).
How could an estimate be so accurate?
Once again, apparently the output of a computer program was copied, published, and disseminated without the benefit of intervening thought. CIA statisticians need to be included among those federal officials who deserve a short course in the use of significant figures in mathematics (MATHEMATICAL AND STATISTICAL LIES ABOUT HIV/AIDS, 2 December 2007).

RWANDA: CIRCUMCISE ALL MEN—EVEN IF IT MEANS MORE “HIV” “INFECTION”

“Rwanda in mass circumcision drive” (BBC, 22 January 2008)
“Rwanda has launched a campaign to encourage all men to be circumcised, to reduce the risk of catching HIV/Aids. . . . soldiers, policemen and students would be asked to come forward first for circumcision. . . . ‘We will start this campaign with the new born and young men in universities, the army and police’. . . . While it will be nominally voluntary, correspondents say many in the armed forces will regard it as an order. . .
…
The UN World Health Organisation has said male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexual HIV infection. . . . Innocent Nyaruhirira, secretary of state for Aids prevention, told the BBC’s Great Lakes Service, ‘It is a fact that men who are circumcised are 60% more likely to be protected against HIV during sexual intercourse’”.

Also:
“HIV study involving University of Manitoba among top medical breakthroughs. . . .
WINNIPEG—Work done by a researcher from the University of Manitoba is among the top 10 medical breakthroughs of the year, according to Time magazine. Dr. Stephen Moses . . . found male circumcision can reduce the risk of HIV infection in men who have heterosexual sex. . . . in Kenya and Uganda . . . circumcised men were roughly 50 per cent less likely than uncircumcised men to acquire HIV during sex with women. . . . Time picked the HIV study as the second-biggest medical breakthrough of 2007.”

On the other hand:
“Unhygienic Circumcision ‘Increases Risk of Hiv’” (SciDev.Net, London, 28 February 2007)

“Museveni scoffs at circumcision for HIV-Aids” (The Monitor [Kampala] 18 February 2007)
“PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni has trashed claims that circumcised men are less prone to HIV/Aids infection. . . . “Why are Muslims and Bagisu dying? Who beats the Bagisu when it comes to circumcising men?” . . . Among the Bagisu, a tribe in eastern Uganda, every male, between adolescence and manhood, must be circumcised.”

“Circumcised male and female virgins were substantially more likely to be HIV infected than uncircumcised virgins [emphasis added] (Kenyan females: 3.2% vs. 1.4%, odds ratio [OR] Z 2.38; Kenyan males: 1.8% vs. 0%, OR undefined; Lesothoan males: 6.1% vs. 1.9%, OR 3.36; Tanzanian males: 2.9% vs. 1.0%, OR 2.99; weighted mean phi correlation Z0.07, 95% confidence interval, 0.03 to 0.11). Among adolescents, regardless of sexual experience, circumcision was just as strongly associated with prevalent HIV infection” (Brewer et al., Annals of Epidemiology 17 [2007] 217-26).

“Circumcision does not affect HIV in US men—
WASHINGTON, Dec 3 (Reuters)— Circumcision may reduce a man’s risk of infection with the AIDS virus by up to 60 percent if he is an African, but it does not appear to help American men of color . . . . Black and Latino men were just as likely to become infected with the AIDS virus whether they were circumcised or not, Greg Millett of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found. ‘We also found no protective benefit for a subset of black MSM (men who have sex with men) who also had recent sex with female partners . . . . Overall, we found no association between circumcision status and HIV infection status among black or Latino’ MSM. . . . Experts knew circumcision would not protect a female sex partner, nor the male sex partner being penetrated. But Millett’s study found no benefit of circumcision to any of the men. ‘We also found no protective benefit of circumcision among those men reporting recent unprotected sex with a male partner in which they were exclusively the insertive male partner’ . . . .
HIV is much more common among black and Latino men than whites and this may offset any protection offered by circumcision . . . . Black and Latino men are more likely to have sex with other black and Latino men, and thus may be exposed to HIV more often than white men.”

Above all, since it is in Rwanda that mass circumcision is being urged or perhaps even enforced, consider the data in Rwanda’s own Demographic and Health Survey for 2005 (published July 2006; available at http://www.measuredhs.com/pubs/pub_details.cfm?ID=594&srchTp=). In Chapter 15, “HIV prevalence and associated factors”, Table 15.6 on p. 234 reports the rate of HIV-positive for circumcised men as 3.8% and for not circumcised men as 2.1%. IF circumcision has a causal relation to “infection by HIV” in Rwanda, then a program of mass circumcision seems destined to increase the “infection” rate in Rwanda by about 80%. Whether or not there is a causal relation, mass circumcision will have some deleterious side-effects owing to the risk of infection by real microbes that is associated with any surgery.

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This sort of thing explains why such matters must be left to the experts; the rest of us could easily become confused by the published scientific evidence which shows that circumcision decreases the chance of acquiring “HIV”—or increases it—or makes no difference. Furthermore, that it makes no difference when you are “exposed” to it more–at least, if you are Black or Latino—in the United States, that is, because for Black men in Africa it does make a difference even though they are “exposed” to it one heck of a lot more than in the United States.

On the other hand, this sort of thing shows why public policies about such matters are too important to be left to the HIV/AIDS experts; just as war is too important to be left to the generals, and for the same sort of reason: they are preoccupied with their encounters with trees, and imagine that if you’ve seen one tree you’ve seen them all, and they understand nothing about the surrounding forest.

[Re-edited in the attempt to make clear that “HIV-positive” does not mean infection by a virus]