An Unspoken Truth...

This is a great article, albeit more than a tad depressing.

Put simply, it's an indictment of how poorly government and NGO attempts to help stem the spread of AIDS have worked, i.e. largely not at all. It is simply politically incorrect to change behavior patterns, even when these behavior patterns - multiple partners at the same time - is largely responsible for the devastating effect that AIDS is having in Africa. NGOs and donors are more interested in PR and helping those that make good reporting than they are in actually doing something about it.

However, the author is missing one additional point, one that is also unspoken.


If diseases, such as AIDS, were to be "properly" addressed and the rates of infection were to slow, what would all those lovely benefactors actually then do?

AIDS prevention is a multi-billion dollar business. Getting people to change their behavior, just to serial partners rather than simultaneous ones, would have an enormous effect on the livelihoods of those involved. A negative impact.

Hence it's better to deal with the symptoms rather than with the cause. The way it looks right now, the AIDS industry will be able to milk the disease for all it is worth until Africa is depopulated. If anything, that is how they can maximize their cash flows.

Interesting that the community that loves to accuse the world's troubles on "big business" and capitalism has become the best example of how unbridled capitalism, uninterested in human welfare except their own, latches on to a society and sucks it dry. They themselves are the true villains of this situation.

That is the unspoken truth of the article above.