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At the only hospital in the capital of this tiny West African nation, a 3-year-old AIDS patient named Suleiman receives his daily dose of medication -- a murky brown concoction of seven herbs and spices served out of a bottle that once contained pancake syrup.Jammeh, 41, is a former army colonel who has no formal medical training. He wears white robes and carries a copy of the Quran with him in this mostly Muslim nation.
Just for completeness sake, I was worried that some of you might have missed this absolute corker of a 15 page article in Harper’s (circ: 230,000) by AIDS-denialist Celia Farber, in which all kinds of entertaining claims get an airing. AIDS is actually a “chemical syndrome, caused by accumulated toxins from heavy drug use,” “many cases of AIDS are the consequence of heavy drug use, both recreational (poppers, cocaine, methamphetamines, etc.) and medical (AZT, etc.)”; “HIV is a harmless passenger virus that infects a small percentage of the population and is spread primarily from mother to child, though at a relatively low rate”; “75 percent of AIDS cases in the West can be attributed to drug toxicity. If toxic AIDS therapies were discontinued…thousands of lives could be saved virtually overnight.”
Everyone knows that the South African government is headed by a longstanding denialist of the link between HIV and AIDS, [President] Thabo Mbeki, who held back anti-retroviral treatment for many years; but less well known is the fact that his health minster, Tshabalala-Msimang, is also a staunch advocate for weekend glossy magazine-style nutritionism, an ardent critic of medical drugs, and a close associate of a controversial vitamin salesman.South Africa’s stand at the conference was described by delegates as the “salad stall”, and consisted of some garlic, some beetroot, the African potato, and other vegetable action. Some boxes of anti-retroviral drugs were added, but these were apparently borrowed, from conference delegates.Interviewed on SABC about this, the health minister came out with exactly the kind of thing you’d expect to hear at any North London dinner party discussion on alternative therapies (only not in the context of one death every 2 minutes). First she was asked about work from the University of Stellenbosch, suggesting that African Potato might be positively dangerous for people on AIDS drugs.Here’s some quick background to make the punchline funnier: one study had to be terminated prematurely, because most of the HIV positive patients who received the plant extract showed severe bone marrow suppression and a drop in their CD4 cell count (this is a bad thing) after 8 weeks. When African Potato extract was given to cats with the excellently uncuddly “Feline Immunodeficiency Virus”, they too succumbed to full blown Feline AIDS, faster than their non-treated controls.But Tshabalala-Msimang disagreed: the researchers should go back to the drawing board, and investigate properly, she said. HIV positive people who used African potato had shown improvement, and they had said so themselves. Is this line of argument sounding familiar?
In this world, Zackie Achmat is a hero: the founder of the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa, he recently won a breakthrough in his long battle against the vitamin-loving Aids denialists of Mbeki’s government, to make HIV medication available through the public health system.Achmat is also HIV positive, and was wealthy enough to afford antiretroviral medication, but deprived himself, risking his own life, as a matter of principle, until they were made widely available, despite even the personal pleas of Nelson Mandela, an avowed and public supporter of both antiretroviral medication and Achmat’s work.Achmat’s victory, tragically a decade too late, was a deep wound for Matthias Rath, the German vitamin impresario who claims that his vitamin pills are better for Aids than medication, and his colleague Anthony Brink, a barrister and the leader of an allied organisation, the Treatment Information Group, which campaigns vociferously against the currently available antiretroviral medication, claiming - loudly - that they are not just ineffective but actively harmful.This man Anthony Brink has now managed to file a complaint against Achmat with, of all places, the Hague international criminal court: Achmat is accused of genocide, for successfully campaigning to get access to HIV drugs for the South African people.
Christine Maggiore was in prime form, engaging and articulate, when she explained to a Phoenix radio host in late March why she didn't believe HIV caused AIDS.The HIV-positive mother of two laid out matter-of-factly why, even while pregnant, she hadn't taken HIV medications, and why she had never tested her children for the virus."Our children have excellent records of health," Maggiore said on the Air America program when asked about 7-year-old Charlie and 3-year-old Eliza Jane Scovill. "They've never had respiratory problems, flus, intractable colds, ear infections, nothing. So, our choices, however radical they may seem, are extremely well-founded."Seven weeks later, Eliza Jane was dead.The cause, according to a Sept. 15 report by the Los Angeles County coroner, was AIDS-related pneumonia.
Way back in early 2001, I linked up an interview with Yusuf Hamied, the chairman of Indian drug manufacturer Cipla. (The original interview is no longer available, but this Google search will net you plenty of similar material if you want to check it out.) In a nutshell, Cipla manufactures generic copies of Western drugs and sells them in the developing world at around 5% of the price that Western companies charge for the same medications. As I noted in the original post, almost all of the drugs that Cipla copies are aimed at treating or preventing diseases that are epidemic in the Third World—diseases like AIDS, Hepatitis, etc. Cipla and the many other members of the Indian pharmaceutical industry who also engage in this same practice make these life-saving drugs available at prices that the poor in the developing world can actually afford.The American and European pharmaceutical industries have been trying to shut down this drug cloning practice for years, an attempt that's made all the more nauseating by the fact that the Western originals of the drugs in question are priced way too high for these markets anyway. In other words, Big Pharma isn't losing much business to Cipla and the other Indian generic makers, because the people who buy Indian generics could never afford the originals. Cipla even voluntarily offered to pay Western companies a percentage of the sales of the generics, but the offer was turned down.
Well, those are some very interesting and depressing links.
"Why our child — so appreciated, so held, so carefully nurtured — and not one ignored, abused or abandoned?" she wrote. "How come what we offered was not enough to keep her here when children with far less — impatient distracted parents, a small apartment on a busy street, extended day care, Oscar Mayer Lunchables — will happily stay?"
But what is CNN reporting on Africa for? I thought there was a huge media embargo on reporting on bad things happening in Africa? How can we complain about our lives if we know so many people have it so much worse? The fucking walls are coming down man...they're coming down.
