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This week's Editorial
Test Your IAQ
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Reality Bytes
A letter to my son's doctor
by
Russell Schoch
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Test Your IAQ The visit of Washington by President Mbeki of South Africa might have been just one more official state visit except for the AIDS issue. Predictably enough, Mbeki's stance on AIDs generated lots of media hype. Predictable because of the subject and even more because the South African President was re-jecting the conventional wisdom on that subject.<P> In most websites you will find a FAQ or Frequently Asked Questions section. Hence the title of this piece. In researching African and American media on the subject I found lots of questions I have never thought to ask and that I have never seen elsewhere. The media climate in which we live tends to reduce any issue to a few buzzwords and assumptions for easy conceptual handling. In my reading I found more questions than answers including some of the following.AIDS is considered by most of us at this point as the plague of the 21st century, the killer disease of the new millenium. But can AIDS even be considered a disease? Or is it the breakdown of the body's immune system, which leaves the body defenseless against the many opportunistic diseases that then ravage it. This distinction is important to researchers who differ from the mainstream view of AIDS and its treatment. The equation of HIV with AIDs is now simply considered a fact. If you've got HIV you will eventually get AIDS and should start drug treatment immediately. The argument against this point of view is based on the fact that the criterion for declaring a person HIV positive is the presence of the HIV antibody in the blood, and not the HIV virus. The presence of the anti-body in most diseases is an indication that the body is coping succesfully with the disease in question. Why is the approach to AIDS different? The most recent news is that the drug com- panies are going to drop their price for a course of AZT treatment from $10,000 a year to $150 a month. But it has to be remembered that this is in a country where the average income is $1000 annually, keeping the drug way beyond most people's reach. It is now known that mBeki won't give AZT to pregmant women with AIDS, underlying the perception of him as some kind of monster? But it needs to be kept in mind that AIDs is not the only health problem and that health problems are only one expense for this impoverished Third World country. AZT is the only treatment for AIDs it is now commonly thought. But it is, in fact, not a "cure" and research continues all over the world. In addition, AZT can actually be harmful to those who are also suffering from malnutrition, inadequate water sanitation and other problems associated with extreme poverty. Eleven million orphaned by AIDS in Africa is the latest horrifying statistic blared out by increasingly loud headlines. But how are statistics on the incidence of AIDs in Africa arrived at? Are the clinical standards and definitions used in Africa the same as those used in the the West? A startling report from Uganda says no. It is now a given that AIDS is spread large- ly through homosexual contact in the US and Europe but heterosexually in Africa. But why? And how scientific is this view? Thoughtful and provocative are the two buzzwords I'll choose to describe the articles |