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 ---
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