AIDS hype In Africa?
No HIV test required, disease defined differently than in U.S.
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By Jon Basil Utley
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© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com

Although President Clinton has declared AIDS, particularly in Africa, to
be a national security threat to the U.S., it turns out that AIDS in
Africa -- which doesn't even require an HIV test to diagnose -- may be
avery different condition than AIDS in America.

Evidence shows that "AIDS" in Africa is just a new description of many
age-old diseases common to nations in misery and war with starvation,
wrecked economies and ruined public health services. HIV tests, essential
to any diagnosis of AIDS in the United States, aren't even given in
Africa, except to tiny samples of the population.

For Africa, there is the "Bangui Definition." Decided upon at a World
Health Organization meeting in October, 1985, it's almost never mentioned
in major media alarms about exploding AIDS cases.

The meeting was organized by an official of the Centers for Disease
Control in Atlanta, Joseph McCormick. He explains in his book, "Level 4,
Virus Hunters of the CDC," "... no virus tests suited to widespread use,
yet existed. ... We needed a set of guidelines ... The definition has
proven useful in areas where no testing is available."

Indeed, the definition served to explode the number of "AIDS cases." Panic
stories began to abound of entire populations at risk with 30 or 40
percent rates of infection and "22.5 million victims now infected with
HIV." (Boston Globe, Oct. 10, 1999)

To have AIDS, according to the Bengui Definition, the patient must have
two of these three symptoms: "prolonged fevers for a month or more, weight
loss over 10 percent, or prolonged diarrhea," combined with any one of
several minor symptoms -- chronically swollen lymph nodes, persistent
cough for more than a month, persistent herpes, itching skin inflammation
or several others.

But many of these symptoms show up from other African diseases, now vastly
spread because of the political chaos. Poor sanitation, poverty,
malnutrition and parasitic diseases were always common and are now
endemic. In America, AIDS is a name for 30-odd diseases found together
with a positive test for HIV antibodies. Consequently, being HIV positive
is the requirement for a diagnosis of AIDS in the U.S.

In addition, there's even a credibility problem with such HIV testing as
it is done. The U.S. Government's CDC report, "HIV, AIDS, and Reproductive
Health," explains on page 99 "the high rate of false-positive screening
tests" and the need for subsequent confirmatory tests. It also states,
"All HIV testing is subject to error and laboratory workers with less
experience have high rates of false results."

False positive test results with the common HIV ELISA tests can come from
many causes, including pregnancy and diseases endemic to poverty-stricken
Africa, such as malaria, tuberculosis and leprosy. The Western Blot is a
more precise follow-up test, but expensive and rarely done in Africa.

Test results derived from small, infected groups are extrapolated to
include whole populations in Africa. In 1994, an article in the Journal of
Infectious Diseases concluded that HIV tests were useless in central
Africa because the prevalence of these microbes caused a 70 percent false
positive rate.

Transmission to infants from infected mothers' milk is reportedly
widespread, but can't really be checked until 15 months after birth, when
the infant develops its own antibodies.

There does, however, exist a strict tally of AIDS cases actually reported
to the World Health Organization. The Nov. 26, 1999, "Weekly
Epidemiological Record" reports a cumulative total of 794,444 cases of
AIDS in Africa since 1982.

"It's also a money game, and Africans learned to play it," says Michael
Fumento, author of "The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS" -- "going to places
with high rates and then extrapolating positive test results over the
entire nation, because that's where the money is. If diseases are
diagnosed as traditional, few Westerners care, but if they are described
as AIDS, money and help come flowing in from Western nations."

For example, tuberculosis deaths have now been reclassified as AIDS deaths
in many African statistical reports. It's the same disease, but now it
qualifies for help.

These facts are amazingly unreported in America. Tom Bethell, Washington
editor of the American Spectator, writes in a recent article titled,
"Inventing an Epidemic," how Newsweek, the New York Times and other major
media write long, learned reports, but somehow never mention the absence
of HIV testing in arriving at infection statistics.

Now South Africa's President, Thabo Mbeki, has raised a political
firestorm by questioning the conventional "wisdom" about African AIDS --
supposedly infecting 10 percent of South Africa's population -- and has
brought the wrath of the AIDS establishment upon himself. He argues that
African AIDS may not be the same disease as in the U.S. Mbeki also said he
is surprised how people claiming to be scientists "are determined that
scientific discourse and inquiry should cease, because 'most of the world'
is of one mind."

In questioning the reason for what appears to be gross exaggeration of
AIDS statistics, experts bring up the old legal term of "Cui bono" -- who
benefits? The list is very long.

In money terms, first there is the pharmaceutical industry. If AIDS in
Africa is now a national security threat, as President Clinton has
declared, American money will be appropriated for the very expensive AIDS
drugs to spend in Africa -- billions of dollars of potential profits. If
Washington doesn't appropriate funds, there's the fear that African
nations might buy generic, foreign-made copies of U.S. drugs.

Then there is the public health establishment. More billions can go for
salaries, offices, staffing, travel and long reports. The World Health
Organization budget has skyrocketed along with African AIDS statistics.
Many public health officials are well meaning, seeing AIDS fears as the
only way to get money to help the misery afflicting so much of Africa. In
America, government AIDS money is spread far and wide. Federal spending
now tops $10 billion and is increasing yearly even as case loads fall.

One of the most pernicious effects of the scare tactics is the wish to
"prove" that AIDS is a heterosexual disease that "anybody can get,"
distracting from its most recognized form of transmission -- intravenous
drug needle sharing and unprotected anal sex.

As Bethell writes, "The failure of American AIDS to 'explode' into the
general population led the authorities to look for the phenomenon
elsewhere. New AIDS cases in the U.S. began falling before the
introduction of 'protease inhibitor' therapy, and from 1997 to 1998
dropped from about 60,000 to 48,000. Of teenagers diagnosed in 1998, only
68 were classified as 'heterosexual contact.' Among women, AIDS diagnoses
fell from 13,000 in 1997 to 11,000 in 1998. ... If the very high AIDS
spending by the U.S. government is to be sustained, the emergency would
have to be drummed up elsewhere, ... so Africa beckoned."

Also, writes Bethell, the CDC's McCormick was interested in trying to
prove that AIDS was a heterosexual disease, contagious from regular sex,
and claiming, "There's a one to one sex ratio in Zaire."

However, contradicting the highly-publicized "heterosexual" AIDS infection
rates in sub-Saharan Africa, HIV is difficult to contract. Under normal,
healthy conditions, the chances of an infected man transmitting the virus
to an unprotected woman are less then 2 in 1,000, according to the World
Bank. And the August 15, 1997, "American Journal of Epidemiology" reported
that male-to-female transmission of HIV is extremely difficult, requiring
on average one thousand unprotected sexual (non-anal) contacts, and
female-to-male requires on average 8,000.

Although helping alleviate the human misery in Africa is widely regarded
as a worthwhile endeavor for Western nations, it now seems likely that
this help is being engineered by vested interests that participate,
however nobly, in gross distortion of statistics.

WorldNetDaily called the White House AIDS policy director's office three
times, specifying the question about how AIDS statistics were arrived at
without HIV tests. Calls were not returned.

The New York Times public affairs office did send copies of articles about
the scarcity of AIDS testing in Africa, but none of them questioned the
relationship between scarce testing and high numbers of supposed HIV
positive cases.

The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta referred questions about
African AIDS statistics to UNAIDS, the United Nations AIDS operation.
UNAIDS sent extensive material about AIDS testing methods, but didn't
answer the questions about African AIDS statistics.

Jon Basil Utley, formerly a foreign correspondent in South America for
Knight Ridder newspapers and associate editor of the Times of the
Americas, is the Robert A. Taft Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
He has also been a long-time commentator for the Voice of America.