UNAIDS Happily Stoke Up HIV Epidemic Using Public Money

Someone recently raised the question in a Kenyan newspaper of whether a negative HIV test result in one partner implied that the other partner is also negative. The answer is a resounding 'No', but the person replying was not quite clear enough on the matter: "There are instances where one partner is HIV-negative and the other is HIV-positive".

In many African countries, half of the couples infected with HIV are discordant, meaning that only one partner is infected. And about half of those in such discordant relationships are female. People in discordant relationships can and do have unprotected sex, often for years, without transmitting the virus. And in couples where both partners are infected, it has often been found that they were both infected by a different source.

More worryingly, you can not imply the HIV status of a woman from the HIV status of her children. Not only can HIV positive women have HIV negative children but HIV negative women often seem to end up with HIV positive children. UNAIDS and others deny that this phenomenon is significant and very little research has been carried out to find out if they are right.

Indeed, the very mention of terms like 'nosocomial', 'iatrogenic', 'hospital acquired' (all meaning roughly the same thing) is something of a taboo. In the same way that people all over the world see talk about sex as taboo, the highly paid and overqualified people who make up the AIDS industry see talk about non-sexual HIV transmission as taboo. Perhaps it's a cultural trait or some kind of institutional tradition, who knows.

Things in Mozambique may be different. Most of the relevant publications are in Portuguese, but Dr David Gisselquist recently sent me some figures for HIV positive children with HIV negative mothers. It was kindly translated by a researcher who knows Portuguese. I just wonder how much other vital data is available but only in a language I don't know. I suspect there's a lot.

Anyhow, the proportion of HIV positive children with HIV negative mothers is around 30%. This is an alarming figure, suggesting that infants and children, as well as mothers (and the population as a whole), face serious risks of HIV transmission from unsafe healthcare.

The AIDS industry has always tried to diminish the likelihood of any form of non-sexual HIV transmission and a similarly embarrassing revelation a few years ago, that time in Swaziland, was dismissed as being a result of babies being raised by someone other than their birth mother. This unconvincing argument is quite telling, too; the industry is not interested and will not investigate.

Cock-ups in health services are not confined to dirt-poor countries with disasterous infrastructures and extreme shortages of skilled personnel and equipment. They also occur in countries that have very high quality, accessible healthcare systems. There have been numerous scares about healthcare transmission of HIV, hepatitis and other conditions. And recently there was a scare about a mother in the UK who was given the wrong (expressed) breastmilk for her infant, several times.

The figures for Mozambique are unlikely to reveal the full picture. Women with HIV positive children who are HIV positive themselves may not have infected their children. And it is also possible that some children may have infected their mother. Or they may both have been infected through different routes. Many women are found to seroconvert late in their pregnancy or just after giving birth. The AIDS industry assumes that this is because they continue to have unprotected sex, probably often with strangers, during their pregnancy.

This is an appalling attitude towards African people and, as it is not the received view of non-Africans, it must also be considered racist, institutionally racist. The picture that is painted of women is similarly bigoted and entirely sexist. In Western countries, if a HIV negative woman is found to have a HIV positive child, there is an investigation, not an outpouring of racist bilge.

To misrepresent HIV as a purely sexually transmitted virus (in African countries, alone) is to condemn people to a lifelong, debilitating disease that will likely reduce the sufferer's lifespan. It also condemns many people to a life of stigma, persecution, isolation and violence.

To stand by and watch people being needlessly infected with HIV is bad enough but to brand them as stupid, careless, ignorant, and even as evil, is beyond belief. The HIV industry, especially UNAIDS, need to be recognised as being more than just ineffective; they are also playing a significant part in fuelling the HIV epidemic.