Michael Turner
Wed, 16 Feb 2005 22:33:03 -0800
Mark writes: > Sad. Could you imagine him saying something like > *economics* isn't his strong point? For some reason > it's okay to be bad at science. The irony here is that (a) economics is also a science, and (b) Blair (like most politicians) probably doesn't know much about economics either. > Maybe Bush could give him a quick primer the next time > he visits. I understand he minored in astrophysics. Really? I thought Dubya's hobby was cosmochemistry .... > The worst world leader in this regard, imho, is Thabo > Mbeki of South Africa. He has the blood of thousands > on his hands because of his crackpot beliefs about > AIDS, with thousands or millions more to come. Don't > even get me started. Actually, he's responsible for helping improve access to AIDS drugs in South Africa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thabo_Mbeki And, as the article points out, the current health minister is taking a more "conventional" approach to the problem. If you read what Mbeki has actually said http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/news/durbspmbeki.htm it comes down to having serious doubts that HIV could possibly be at the root of so many health problems in his country. For the public health context of a place like South Africa, he may well be right: extreme poverty is, on the one hand, very immuno-suppressive when you combine all the factors, and also exposes the poor to a wide variety of pathogens. If, in fact, HIV is lethally immunosuppressive over the long term, it may still be the case in South Africa that lots of people tested as HIV positive are dying of other diseases that have been arbitrarily grouped as some special kind of African AIDS -- diseases that, for some peculiar reason, don't afflict AIDS sufferers in the developed world. In short, they could be dying of "extreme poverty" well before HIV could start start affecting their health. In many cases, HIV infection may be a symptom of living such an immuno-suppressive and septic existence, rather than a cause of immune system suppression. Despite a huge HIV infection rate in Africa (if the public health statistics of staggeringly corrupt and aid-dependent African governments are to be believed), malaria is still killing more people every two months than died in the Asian tsunami disaster. If, in fact, 20% of South Africans are HIV+, and if in fact, being HIV+ is a death sentence after ten years (plus or minus a few) of being infected, you can still make a case that it's not going make a major difference in life expectancies on a continent like Africa, where many people die in their 40s anyway. The money spent on expensive AIDS drugs may well be more effectively spent on other public health measures. Unfortunately, people in the developed world are not phobic about malaria and tuberculosis the way they are about AIDS, so talking up AIDS in Africa is the sine qua non of getting their money. When this money actually hits that continent, it usually turns into "AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria" money, as well it should - those other diseases are killing a lot more people right now. If someone gave me a billion dollars, and the stark choice between spending it on AIDS drugs or on sanitation - public works for sewage lines and education about sanitation, it's a no-brainer for me: go for sanitation. It would be a false choice, admittedly; there should be enough money for both. The real problem is: where's that money? While there is such a thing as medical science, medicine itself is not a science, and public health policy is definitely not a science. It's easy to be rational about an exploding galaxy a million light years away. That explosion might be extinguishing trillions of sentient beings - or maybe it isn't. (Actually, if it did, it killed them a long time ago.) In any case, it can't hurt us, can it? And if our own galaxy were also exploding, we wouldn't know until it was too late, and there's nothing to be done about it anyway. Human health, in the here and now, is different. It's not easy to be rational about health - your own or other people's. Thabo Mbeki's position makes sense to me. It's his country, he's aware of the problems, and he's just asking people to make intelligent calculations based on certainties and probabilities. $6 spent on one day's dose of AIDS drugs might add 1 day of life expectancy for one person - or it might not. $6 spent on DDT-laced mosquito netting might add years of life expectancy for everyone who sleeps under it. How would you spend that $6, if it came down to a choice? And those are the kinds of choices any honest government has to make in Africa. Acknowledging that these are the kinds of choices an honest government has to make is an important step in making those governments more honest - and that's significant because government dishonesty is probably the real number one killer in the developing world. -michael --- LARRY KLAES <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > .. but sigh: > > The prime minister, who admitted that science had > passed him by at school, was given a run-down of the > Huygens space probe by scientists at the Open > University in Milton Keynes. > > http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/sciences/story/0,12243,1415914,00.htm l<http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/sciences/story/0,12243,1415914,00.h tml> > > He said: "I missed out on science at school, I'm > afraid. It passed me by completely, but it's a > fantastic subject." > > He added: "It must have been fascinating to work on > it, though." > > The professor replied: "On good days." > > As the prime minister left, Prof Zarnecki presented > him with a copy of the last photograph taken by > Huygens of the surface of Titan. > > Mr Blair told him: "My little boy will love it." > > > > __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Easier than ever with enhanced search. Learn more. http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250 == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: europa@klx.com Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/ == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: europa@klx.com Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/