comment 18
“Clean water, food and shelter will help healthy people stay healthy. They will do nothing significant to save the lives of HIV+ people, because they’re not a cure for HIV.
ARVs without clean water, food and shelter will save more HIV+ lives than clean water, food and shelter without ARVs.”

Just in case anyone has their heads screwed on wrong: there is NO cure to date for HIV/AIDS. There is no scientific evidence to think of ARVs as “life saving”. They are marginally “life-extending” at best.

Those in control of the media have made anti-science fashionable. It’s well past the time to call them out.

It’s time to stop being so damned polite to the woo-woo crowd and just start speaking up. If you face someone making woo-woo noises, set them straight and challenge them.

Well worth a read of the transcript or look at the video… www.kaisernetwork.org/health_cast/hcast_index.cfm?display=detail&hc=1786

Also in Rural areas – it’s less of a won’t and more of a can’t when it comes to getting medical treatment. Public transport is almost non-existent and when available very expensive. CAn you imagine walking 10k’s in the boiling African sun to obtain medical treatment for your extremed diaorhea?

The problem is the same as in the west – the traditional healers make money out of these poor desperate people (and we’re not talking chump change – we are talking MILLIONS – eg one healer was selling special holy water for 25c a litre – it was just tap water that had had a prayer said over it – an the faithful had to bring their own bottles! A license to print money…

Because of the religious link the traditional healing thing has always been a sensitve issue in south africa. THe government and certain unscrupulous “healers” are basically exploiting a terrified population desperate for salvation for their own ideological and (mostly) financial ends.

As for “community beliefs”, the Treatment Action Campaign is vocal in campaigning for the Government to distribute ARVs. 44 of them were arrested at a recent protest against Tsabalala-Msimang’s barking mad policy.

Would grapefruit juice be used to wash kitchen utensils? Would it be used to mix up baby milk*? Also, I somehow doubt that any fruit, no matter how common, would remain inexpensive if the majority of a nation’s population started using it as their primary water source. Also, what would happen in the grapefruit crop failed?

(* = Yes I know that selling baby milk to people without access to a clean water is generally a bad idea. However, in the real world, mothers sometimes don’t produce enough milk, and it becomes a nutritional necessity.)

Coming soon to waitrose

“grapefruit 69p each”
“toronja 1.99 each”

You know it’s true…

The same happens in SA. So it seems to me that the SA govt stance on ARVs is based in community beliefs and not against them, as suggested by other posters here. Obviously, the SA govt is wrong, but I believe that its position is shared by the community. Which is a huge problem.

Greenpeace are a great band for raising public awareness of environmental issues, and in that I support them whole-heartedly. However, when it comes to the details their verve lets them down somewhat.

Ben’s quote from their paper about a citrus drink ‘protecting’ against cholera is a good example. Always drinking a cheap citrus drink rather than free, cholera contaminated water may prevent you from contracting cholera, but the citrus drink, in itself, cannot ‘protect’ (ie, defend) the body against cholera. Greenpeace have a habit of misunderstanding this kind of detail.

My favourite Greenpeace screw-up, though, has to be the Brent Spar debacle. Having wrongly calculated the quantity of oil remaining on the disused loading station, Greenpeace occupied the Brent Spar and demanded that it be towed to shore for decomissioning, rather than sinking it where it was to act as an artificial reef. There were three main problems:
1. Greenpeace used more fuel in their boats protesting about Brent Spar than there was in the installation.
2. Sinking Brent Spar would have protected the area from fishing. The fishermen wanted it removed as it would have snagged the nets.
3. Greenpeace started a campaign to boycott Shell (Brent Spar’s operators) petrol stations, and suggested that people should use Esso instead. That’s Esso, who’s parent company, Exxon, was owner of the Exxon Valdes, and was also 50% owner of the Brent Spar.

Genius.

archive.greenpeace.org/toxics/reports/cholerachlorine.pdf

“In a study carried out by scientists from the Ministerio de Salud in Lima, cholera was associated with eating unwashed fruits and vegetables and drinking untreated water. However, a drink made from an abundant, inexpensive citrus fruit – toronja — protected against cholera.[4]“

“Shortly after this directive was issued, I was surprised to learn that some local PAHO officials were encountering pockets of resistance to chlorination from a number of health officials, both in Peru and in other countries. I was specifically told that the reason was their concern for chlorination by-products, especially trihalomethanes. This concern had its origin in press releases and published scientific studies widely disseminated by environmental agencies in the developed countries. I traveled to Peru and other countries and personally met with the health officials and even heads of water agencies who expressed their concern directly to me; some even believed that they might be subjected to a lawsuit if they chlorinated or raised the level of chlorine in their water supplies. I also met other concerned health officials in various cholera workshops and symposiums sponsored by PAHO. Most surprising of all was the discovery that even officials in small towns were aware of disinfection by-products and their alleged negative health effects. It was pointed out to all that when the cholera pathogen is present in a water supply, the risk of contracting the disease is immediate, and that a resulting epidemic could cause thousands of deaths. In contrast, the hypothetical health risk posed by trihalomethanes in levels in excess of those recommended by WHO (and EPA) was one extra death per 100,000 persons exposed for a period of 70 years. Unfortunately, some of these well-meaning, but ill-informed officials had to experience the immense proportional difference in risk before accepting this reality.”

Unfortunately, not all of the woo-woo brigade do agree on this statement. Some of them are opposed to water chlorination. This idiocy has been implicated in the 1991 cholera epidemic in Peru.

www.waterandhealth.org/drinkingwater/precaution.html

It’s a methaphor for seemingly well educated, reasonably affluent, ‘respectable’ middle class people who are believers in CAM / MMR-Autism / etc etc. Within a small, self-referencing clique these views can spread and survive in the absence of any conutering opinions.

There are, I’m sure, “North Londoners” in every city and town in the UK……..