When Will UNAIDS Be Abolished?

When people find used hypodermic needles in areas where children play in Western countries, they are upset. Quite rightly so. They don't like the thought that their children are being exposed to injury and diseases, possibly even serious or deadly diseases.

But even many Westerners seem to believe that HIV 'dies' within seconds, minutes or some fairly short period, outside of the body. This is not what the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) says on the subject, although it may have said that at one time. Their current answer to the question 'How well does HIV survive outside the body?' is difficult to interpret.

But no matter how you interpret the risk, no one wants a possibly contaminated needle piercing their skin or that of their children. As well as the physical injury, there is also a risk that the needle is contaminated with hepatitis and it is almost certainly contaminated with bacteria.

So the CDC's comment about 'incorrect interpretations' of risk causing 'unnecessary alarm' seems injudicious. I know the question is about HIV but the answer really needs to address risk as a whole. Potentially, HIV can survive for days and even weeks, under the right conditions. Contact with contaminated needles and other instruments should be avoided and where this is not possible, medical advice is required.

However, the idea that the HIV does not live outside the body is widely held, by professionals and lay people. And in countries like Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, it is far more dangerous to be unaware of the risks. The chances of medical or cosmetic equipment being contaminated in countries with high prevalence of HIV, hepatitis and other diseases can be very high.

You might think that there would be a lot of awareness of these risks and how to avoid them but I have rarely spoken to anyone who has considered the risks they face from contaminated instruments in health or cosmetic facilities.

UNAIDS dismisses the importance of any form of non-sexual HIV transmission, let alone transmission in health facilities. They grudgingly accept that a few percentage points of HIV transmission in East African countries may come from such routes. But they hardly mention cosmetic instruments, razors, tattooing equipment and the like, at all.

As a result, such transmission may be occurring at high rates and people are doing nothing about it. When they take their child to the hairdresser, or go themselves, they could be picking up scabies, hepatitis, HIV or some kind of bacterial infection. To help people avoid these risks, the best thing to do would be to inform them.

Risks in health facilities are more difficult to handle. Doctors, nurses and other health personnel can be pressed for time and it is not easy for patients, or those accompanying patients, to intervene. At best, personnel will be annoyed, at worst, they will refuse to treat the patient, give them poorer quality treatment or make them wait a long time.

The WHO has published data showing that as much as 14% of injections in developing countries are contaminated with HIV and they have unpublished data showing that this figure can be a lot higher. A large proportion of hepatitis B and C is transmitted through contaminted needles. And an estimated 70% of all injections are not even necessary.

When there is even the hint that someone in a Western country may have come into contact with contaminated equipment, there is an investigation to establish how procedures could have resulted in such a risk. And anyone who may have been affected, even going back years, and through thousands of records, is contacted and screened.

Not only does this sort of investigation and screening of possible use of contaminated equipment not take place in developing countries but UNAIDS and others seem keen to deny that such things, which happen in the best resourced health systems in the world, could possibly happen in the worst resourced health systems in the world.

GMOs: You Pay Me to Shit in Your Garden

Supposing I were to re-engineer my domestic sewage system so that it dumps sewage from my house into my neighbour's garden, my neighbour would be quite upset, right? But supposing I were to take it a little further and sue my neighbour in court for refusing to pay me for manuring his garden, that would really add insult to injury, wouldn't it? It sounds ridiculous for me to be claiming that I am the injured party, when I have, without permission or discussion, used my neighbour's land as if it belonged to me.

Well, that's how GMOs (genetically modified organisms) work. If I grow GMOs on my land and they contaminate my neighbour's land, my neighbour will have to pay royalties to the seed manufacturer, even though my neighbour may grow non-GMOs or organic crops. My neighbour's crops have been contaminated, not in some way blessed with the bountiful gift of genetically modified crops. I should be compensating my neighbour because the crops now grown on my neighbour's land will no longer be non-GMO and will no longer be organic.

My choice to grow GMOs in the first place is questionable enough, because it is inevitable that they will eventually contaminate my neighbour's crops. But I have effectively also taken the decision that my neighbour should no longer have the right to grow non-GMOs or organic crops. Where did I get this right and why does my neighbour not have the same level of autonomy over their land that I have over mine?

Farmers in Brazil and Argentina are facing this very absurdity, that the serial rapist is taking their victims to court for compensation for the use of their genetic input. Those contaminating the land, the land belonging to those who wish to have nothing to do with GMOs, are set to be paid for their contamination. Australia is busily trying to patch up their laws so that unwitting non-GMO farmers can be protected. But the multinationals that produce GMOs are rich and they are not going to give up easily.

Absurd though this is, it is exactly what awaits any country that is tricked into allowing GMOs to be grown on their land. Individual farmers will not have the right to choose whether to fall for GMOs or not; if their neighbours accept the thirty pieces of silver, their land will also quickly become contaminated and they will also have to pay royalties, they will also be stuck with weeds that are resistant to certain pesticides, their soil will become degraded and they will be forced to buy expensive fertilizers. Their yields and crop quality will also suffer.

Consumers, also, will have to pay for the greed of the few farmers who are willing buy into the plot. Eventually, consumers will not have the choice of GMO or non-GMO crops, they will all become contaminated. It is simply not possible for both GMO and non-GMO crops to be grown in the same areas. While non-GMOs may attract a premium for a while, the price will quickly rise before they become unavailable.

The only solution is to hold out against GMOs, regardless of what carrots the GMO manufacturers hold up, whatever threats they make or whatever lies they propagate about 'food security' and the rest. They are interested in deciding what people grow and eat and that's the way things are in countries like Brazil and Argentina. The costs to the farmers are higher and growing, therefore the costs to consumers are also higher and growing. The only ones that benefit from GMOs are the multinationals.

If anyone has seen the wonderful Italian film, The Bicycle Thieves (or the more recent Bejing Bicycle), they may notice a similar irony, where the person who has been wronged is made to pay for their victimization. How has this cruel and dangerous absurdity been allowed to arise in the first place? Why do faceless multinationals have so much power and influence that they can pay for a policy of appeasement, while they treat the defenceless as guinea pigs in their deadly experiments? And will we simply say 'never again' after conventional farming has been destroyed? There may be time to prevent this disaster in some countries, but it has to be now. The consequences cannot be reversed.