Note, mind you, that, according to the article, she “showed the bruises”. Anyone who knows what a real whipping is knows that it doesn’t leave bruises, it leaves scars.

> Also, the sovereign treatment for malaria is DDT, which is worse than plutonium or something, according to the Silent Spring school of environmental wonderfulness.

The laughable part is that Rachel Carson was demonstrated to have been full of it decades ago. No one in the media seems to have spotted this, however (likewise the fact that Nader’s Unsafe At Any Speed was wrong on almost every level on the day it was published).

That said, one of the flaws of the arguments offered in these comments is that they note no human consequence with the DDT exposure.

What gave you the idea that the Greens give a rat’s ass about the safety of humans? I’d think that the flaws in these arguments would be in glowing, flickering neon…

Carson’s original book was about the destruction of animals/insects as a result of DDT use — Humans weren’t even remotely relevant.

If you want more amusement, then you should note the number of out of control imported species which were brought in in order to manage some pest or another — and which inevitably continue to F up the environments they are in. If you find a chemical solution is causing a problem, you stop and it and its damage slowly goes away. This “preferred” “all natural” method, once a screwup is obvious, is forever… but the Greens know better than the rest of us. They must, because their hearts are in the right places!

Unfortunately for all involved, their heads are consistently stuck in all the wrong places as well.

Inadequate needle supply for medical facilities. You will recall several years ago when a US athlete visiting Russia suffered an accident and a Russian athlete offered for her use his stash of western-acquired medical sharps. It was thought to have been a grand gesture, as the Russian sharps production is a fraction of the need. The saftey factor went without saying.

In addition, Uganda as a society seems to be doing well with the morals-based approach to preventing the spread. Of course, this absolutely fries some folks.

I didn’t claim that abstinence wouldn’t work for an individual. Surely it works for many individuals, as does the conscientious use of condoms for many others. My point, however, is simply that eradicating AIDS is going to be difficult for the very reason that its main mode of transmission is so intimately tied up with morals and desires. Even setting aside the fact that most everyone wants to have sex, in some societies we have morals and practices, like for instance the widow inheritance we just read about, that actually encourage infection. People will change their DDT-spraying habits far more easily than they will change their sex habits. Sex is influenced my culture, love, desire, and yes, fear of disease. But that’s just one part of the calculus, and for many it will not be the deciding factor.

Also, I don’t know what those CDC folks falsified, but it seems abundantly clear that heterosexual contact is at least an effective means of transmission. Just look at Africa. How do you think all those women get infected?

Several years ago, two docs from the CDC admitted they’d lied about the threat to the straight community from AIDS. The reason was to spread panic far and wide or there might not have been the political pressure to address the issue. Might be true, as far as motivation goes, but there are some in the field who, this confession notwithstanding, and Michael Fumento’s book notwithstanding, either haven’t gotten the message and still believe in the threat, or hope others are gullible, for the same reasons the two CDC guys did.

To claim abstinence (including fidelity) won’t work for an entire society is one thing. To imply it won’t work for individuals is quite another, and false.

I think those numbers may give the wrong impression. Let’s take the example of AIDS v. heart disease. First, I would want to compare the total amount spent on heart disease over the years with the total amount spent on AIDS. AIDS is still a relatively new disease, and scientists are still figuring out what can and can’t be done. Heart disease has been around forever, has been researched forever, and so it would be unsurprising if the amount of new work to be done in a given year were much smaller.

Second, because AIDS, unlike heart disease, is communicable it has the potential, as we have seen in Africa, to reach society-threatening epidemic levels. Because of commuicability the risk presented by AIDS is greater than the risk presented by heart disease, even if that isn’t represented in current death rates.

And last, there is a large difference in life-years lost between AIDS and heart disease. I don’t have the numbers, but I’m sure that the average age at death from heart disease is a lot older than from AIDS. Furthermore, advances in heart medicine might increase that age by mere months, whereas advances in AIDS treatment (particularly a vaccine or cure) would easily increase the number by decades. People with heart disease can have their lives extended, but will probably die of heart disease sooner or later. People with AIDS, if it could be treated, might live another 50 healthy and productive years. Given these three factors, I don’t think such spending priorities are completely out of order.

There is of course the question of how AIDS reasearch money should be spent. Personally, I’m a big fan of Michael Kremer’s research on creating vaccine markets that will spur productive research. He also writes on malaria, tuberculosis, and a number of other important but neglected diseases. I highly recommend reading his stuff.

Richard Aubrey & AVI:

As for malaria, I’ve been interested in DDT for a while, ever since reading this article. It really seems to be the best solution. And I really do think that if more people knew the costs and benefits they would agree. Only a fringe of the hardest-core environmentalists would still oppose it. But most people don’t know.

Anonymous 6:21:

Leaving aside your nonsense about AIDS furthering the leftist agenda and leftists wanting certain regions of the world to be unlivable, which quite frankly makes no sense, there is the issue of your policy recommendation: abstenance. That’s funny, because this whole thread was inspired by a similar suggestion by King Mswati of Swaziland. Sex is basic to human nature and society, and I think only someone fairly naive about human nature would ever characterize an abstenance solution as “simple.”

This, in my analysis, is the thing that makes AIDS a trickier case than malaria, albeit currently less of a killer. Contracting and preventing malaria can be done without much reference to the societies involved. In contrast, AIDS is transmitted through an act that is at once emotionally-charged, potentially shameful, and basic to most societies and to human propagation generally. Likewise, preventing AIDS usually involves explosive emotions, overcoming shame, and in many cases the reformation of social mores and reorganization of long-standing cultural norms. It is unsurprising that it has been so stubbornly difficult to control, and has wrecked such havoc on the societies it affects.