File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2000/bhaskar.0007, message 25


Date: Tue, 4 Jul 2000 21:02:30 +0100
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: BHA: Mbeki and AIDS


Hi all,

This is a side issue, but my response to Colin re theory choice re the
AIDS epidemic in Africa on reflection did less than justice to Mbeki's
position. He's quite right to raise the macro social issues (Western
colonialism, poverty) - there can be little doubt that the HIV virus was
unleashed on Africa and the world from chimpanzees via experiments done
on polio vaccines in Uganda which used local people as guinea pigs, so
at the very least the West should come to the party and make
preventative medicines etc affordable. But at the level of microbiology
he's making both a scientific and a political mistake in adopting the
view that the HIV virus doesn't cause AIDS - the case for the West to
lower the cost of medicines would be strengthened if he favoured the
orthodox scientific view, and the relationship between third world
poverty (conducive to the spread of AIDS and other diseases), on the one
hand, and international capital on the other obtains independently of
truth at the level of microbiology. A good example of how important the
indisciplinary emphasis in CR is. 

Mervyn


-- 
Mervyn Hartwig
13 Spenser Road
Herne Hill
London SE24 ONS
United Kingdom
Tel: 020 7 737 2892
Email: mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk


     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005