The Vaccine Origin Of Monkey Virus Epidemics
The Vaccine Origin Of Monkey Virus Epidemics
The explanations for the HIV and later the Ebola virus epidemic have been prosaic. The notion that 1) monkey hunters in jungle somewhere ate these monkeys, got infected that way and 2) this led to a slow, spreading generalized epidemic breaking free from it's former jungle environment.
There is a simpler, more direct explanation. That explanation is, that for decades, western scientists have flown to Africa, trapped monkeys and flew them to the United States. From this organ tissue, they cultivated vaccines. Not all the monkey viruses were removed from these vaccines.
The result was that millions of people worldwide have become infected with monkey viruses. This has been the case for: HIV, SV40, Ebola and Zika. It is remarkable that all these viruses have been known to vaccine producers for over half a century.
HIV AND SV40
MrK: This evidence is from an interview with the head of vaccine development at the Merck corporation, dr. Maurice Hilleman. In his words, "we brought the AIDS virus to the United States".
(YOUTUBE) Vaccine pioneer admits adding cancer-causing virus to Vaccine
(Natural News) Merck vaccine scientist Dr. Maurice Hilleman admitted presence of SV40, AIDS and cancer viruses in vaccines
Thursday, September 15, 2011
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
Tags: Dr Maurice Hilleman, SV40, vaccines
(NaturalNews) One of the most prominent vaccine scientists in the history of the vaccine industry -- a Merck scientist -- made a recording where he openly admits that vaccines given to Americans were contaminated with leukemia and cancer viruses. In response, his colleagues (who are also recorded here) break out into laughter and seem to think it's hilarious. They then suggest that because these vaccines are first tested in Russia, they will help the U.S. win the Olympics because the Russian athletes will all be "loaded down with tumors." (Thus, they knew these vaccines caused cancer in humans.)
This isn't some conspiracy theory -- these are the words of a top Merck scientist who probably had no idea that his recording would be widely reviewed across the internet (which didn't even exist when he made this recording). He probably thought this would remain a secret forever. When asked why this didn't get out to the press, he replied "Obviously you don't go out, this is a scientific affair within the scientific community."
In other words, vaccine scientists cover for vaccine scientists. They keep all their dirty secrets within their own circle of silence and don't reveal the truth about the contamination of their vaccines.
You can hear this interview at:
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=13EAAF22CDA367...
Here is the full transcript. (Thanks are due to Dr. Len Horowitz for finding this recording and making it publicly available.)
Transcript of audio interview with Dr. Maurice Hilleman
Dr. Len Horowitz: Listen now to the voice of the worlds leading vaccine expert Dr Maurice Hilleman, Chief of the Merck Pharmaceutical Company's vaccine division relay this problem he was having with imported monkeys. He best explains the origin of AIDS, but what you are about to hear was cut from any public disclosures.
Dr Maurice Hilleman: and I think that vaccines have to be considered the bargain basement technology for the 20th century.
Narrator: 50 years ago when Maurice Hilleman was a high school student in Miles City Montana, he hoped he might qualify as a management trainee for the local JC Penney's store. Instead he went on to pioneer more breakthroughs in vaccine research and development than anyone in the history of American medicine. Among the discoveries he made at Merck, are vaccines for mumps, rubella and measles…
Dr Edward Shorter: Tell me how you found SV40 and the polio vaccine.
Dr Maurice Hilleman: Well, that was at Merck. Yeah, I came to Merck. And uh, I was going to develop vaccines. And we had wild viruses in those days. You remember the wild monkey kidney viruses and so forth? And I finally after 6 months gave up and said that you cannot develop vaccines with these damn monkeys, we're finished and if I can't do something I'm going to quit, I'm not going to try it. So I went down to see Bill Mann at the zoo in Washington DC and I told Bill Mann, I said "look, I got a problem and I don't know what the hell to do." Bill Mann is a real bright guy. I said that these lousy monkeys are picking it up while being stored in the airports in transit, loading, off loading. He said, very simply, you go ahead and get your monkeys out of West Africa and get the African Green, bring them into Madrid unload them there, there is no other traffic there for animals, fly them into Philadelphia and pick them up. Or fly them into New York and pick them up, right off the airplane. So we brought African Greens in and I didn't know we were importing the AIDS virus at the time.
Miscellaneous background voices:…(laughter)… it was you who introduced the AIDS virus into the country. Now we know! (laughter) This is the real story! (laughter) What Merck won't do to develop a vaccine! (laughter)
Dr Maurice Hilleman: So what he did, he brought in, I mean we brought in those monkeys, I only had those and this was the solution because those monkeys didn't have the wild viruses but we…
Dr Edward Shorter: Wait, why didn't the greens have the wild viruses since they came from Africa?
Dr Maurice Hilleman: …because they weren't, they weren't, they weren't being infected in these group holding things with all the other 40 different viruses…
Dr Edward Shorter: but they had the ones that they brought from the jungle though...
Dr Maurice Hilleman: …yeah, they had those, but those were relatively few what you do you have a gang housing you're going to have an epidemic transmission of infection in a confined space. So anyway, the greens came in and now we have these and were taking our stocks to clean them up and god now I'm discovering new viruses. So, I said Judas Priest. Well I got an invitation from the Sister Kinney Foundation which was the opposing foundation when it was the live virus…
Dr Edward Shorter: Ah, right…
Dr Maurice Hilleman: Yeah, they had jumped on the Sabin's band wagon and they had asked me to come down and give a talk at the Sister Kinney Foundation meeting and I saw it was an international meeting and god, what am I going to talk about? I know what I'm going to do, I'm going to talk about the detection of non detectable viruses as a topic.
Dr Albert Sabin …there were those who didn't want a live virus vaccine… (unintelligible) …concentrated all its efforts on getting more and more people to use the killed virus vaccine, while they were supporting me for research on the live viruses.
Dr Maurice Hilleman: So now I got to have something (laughter), you know that going to attract attention. And gee, I thought that damn SV40, I mean that damn vaculating agent that we have, I'm just going to pick that particular one, that virus has got to be in vaccines, it's got to be in the Sabin's vaccines so I quick tested it (laughter) and sure enough it was in there.
Dr Edward Shorter: I'll be damned
Dr Maurice Hilleman: … And so now…
Dr Edward Shorter: …so you just took stocks of Sabin's vaccines off the shelf here at Merck…
Dr Maurice Hilleman: …yeah, well it had been made, it was made at Merck…
Dr Edward Shorter: You were making it for Sabin at this point?
Dr Maurice Hilleman: …Yeah, it was made before I came…
Dr Edward Shorter: yeah, but at this point Sabin is still just doing massive field trials…
Dr Maurice Hilleman: …uh huh
Dr Edward Shorter: okay,
Dr Maurice Hilleman: …in Russia and so forth. So I go down and I talked about the detection of non detectable viruses and told Albert, I said listen Albert you know you and I are good friends but I'm going to go down there and you're going to get upset. I'm going to talk about the virus that it's in your vaccine. You're going to get rid of the virus, don't worry about it, you're going to get rid of it… but umm, so of course Albert was very upset...
Dr Edward Shorter: What did he say?
Dr Maurice Hilleman: …well he said basically, that this is just another obfuscation that's going to upset vaccines. I said well you know, you're absolutely right, but we have a new era here we have a new era of the detection and the important thing is to get rid of these viruses.
Dr Edward Shorter: Why would he call it an obfuscation if it was a virus that was contaminating the vaccine?
Dr Maurice Hilleman: …well there are 40 different viruses in these vaccines anyway that we were inactivating and uh,
Dr Edward Shorter: but you weren't inactivating his though…
Dr Maurice Hilleman: …no that's right, but yellow fever vaccine had leukemia virus in it and you know this was in the days of very crude science. So anyway I went down and talked to him and said well, why are you concerned about it? Well I said "I'll tell you what, I have a feeling in my bones that this virus is different, I don't know why to tell you this but I …(unintelligible) …I just think this virus will have some long term effects." And he said what? And I said "cancer". (laughter) I said Albert, you probably think I'm nuts, but I just have that feeling. Well in the mean time we had taken this virus and put it into monkeys and into hamsters. So we had this meeting and that was sort of the topic of the day and the jokes that were going around was that "gee, we would win the Olympics because the Russians would all be loaded down with tumors." (laughter) This was where the vaccine was being tested, this was where… so, uhh, and it really destroyed the meeting and it was sort of the topic. Well anyway…
Dr Edward Shorter: Was this the physicians… (unintelligible) …meeting in New York?
Dr Maurice Hilleman …well no, this was at Sister Kinney…
Dr Edward Shorter: Sister Kinney, right…
Dr Maurice Hilleman: …and Del Becco (sp) got up and he foresaw problems with these kinds of agents.
Dr Edward Shorter: Why didn't this get out into the press?
Dr Maurice Hilleman: …well, I guess it did I don't remember. We had no press release on it. Obviously you don't go out, this is a scientific affair within the scientific community…
Voice of news reporter: …an historic victory over a dread disease is dramatically unfolded at the U of Michigan. Here scientists usher in a new medical age with the monumental reports that prove that the Salk vaccine against crippling polio to be a sensational success. It's a day of triumph for 40 year old Dr. Jonas E Salk developer of the vaccine. He arrives here with Basil O'Connor the head of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis that financed the tests. Hundreds of reporters and scientists gathered from all over the nation gathered for the momentous announcement….
Dr Albert Sabin: …it was too much of a show, it was too much Hollywood. There was too much exaggeration and the impression in 1957 that was, no in 1954 that was given was that the problem had been solved , polio had been conquered.
Dr Maurice Hilleman: …but, anyway we knew it was in our seed stock from making vaccines. That virus you see, is one in 10,000 particles is not an activated… (unintelligible) …it was good science at the time because that was what you did. You didn't worry about these wild viruses.
Dr Edward Shorter: So you discovered, it wasn't being inactivated in the Salk vaccine?
Dr Maurice Hilleman: …Right. So then the next thing you know is, 3, 4 weeks after that we found that there were tumors popping up on these hamsters.
Dr. Len Horowitz: Despite AIDS and Leukemia suddenly becoming pandemic from "wild viruses" Hilleman said, this was "good science" at that time.
NaturalNews wishes to thank Dr. Len Horowitz for uncovering this interview from the national archives, and for getting it released so the public can learn the truth behind the deadly vaccine industry.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/033584_Dr_Maurice_Hilleman_SV40.html#ixzz3s5eT4FlA
ZIKA
Zika was first isolated from a rhesus monkey in Uganda in 1947, by the Rockefeller Foundation. From the patent office, purchasable on line for a mere E599,-.
Patent: Zika virus (ATCC® VR-84™)
Name of Depositor: J. Casals, Rockefeller Foundation
Source: Blood from experimental forest sentinel rhesus monkey, Uganda, 1947
Year of Origin: 1947
EBOLA
The ebola outbreak started as suddenly as it ended. This is because the virus was the same it had always been. Ebola is far too virulent to survive in the human population for any length of time. Any virus that kills it's host with 3 weeks doesn't have the potential to infect a lot of people. On top of that, an ebola patient is only infectious in a few days before their death, when the disease is at it's worst. In other words, there is not a lot of opportunity for this disease to infect a lot of people. So how did a lot of people end up dying from ebola? The answer is that a lot of people were infected at once, and then the disease did what it does and the epidemic burned itself out. So how did lots of people get to be infected all at once? And how did the Zaire Ebola Virus make it all the way to Guinea, if not by migrating flocks of fruitbats or chimpanzees? The most obvious explanation is that a lot of people were injected with ebola, whether by accident or on purpose, as part of a vaccination campaign, and then sent home.
Either way, there is a biowarfare lab within 80 miles of Gueckedou, the alleged ground zero of the epidemic, according to the BBC at that time.
The VHFC or Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Consortium in Kenema, Sierra Leone, is staffed by employees of Harvard, the Broad Institute, Tulane University, Corgenix, Autoimmune Technologies LLC, University of Texas Medial Branch, Zalgen Labs, and more. The team is headed by dr. Robert Garry.
Labels: AIDS, HIV/AIDS FRAUD, MAURICE HILLEMAN, UNAIDS
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COMMENT - UNAIDS writes down it's own numbers - claims victory and wants more people on ARVs.
Keep a close eye on any changes in methodology, like survey types and testing procedures that coincide with this write down.
UNAIDS reports a more than 50% drop in new HIV infections across 25 countries as countries approach the 1000 day deadline to achieve global AIDS targets
In addition, the number of people with access to antiretroviral therapy increased by 63% in the last 24 months—AIDS-related deaths fell by more than 25% between 2005 and 2011 globally.
UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé announcing the 2012 World AIDS day report during the official UNAIDS press conference. Geneva, Switzerland, 20 November 2012.
GENEVA, 20 November 2012—A new World AIDS Day report: Results , by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), shows that unprecedented acceleration in the AIDS response is producing results for people. The report shows that a more than 50% reduction in the rate of new HIV infections has been achieved across 25 low- and middle-income countries––more than half in Africa, the region most affected by HIV.
In some of the countries which have the highest HIV prevalence in the world, rates of new HIV infections have been cut dramatically since 2001; by 73% in Malawi, 71% in Botswana, 68% in Namibia, 58% in Zambia, 50% in Zimbabwe and 41% in South Africa and Swaziland.
In addition to welcome results in HIV prevention, sub-Saharan Africa has reduced AIDS-related deaths by one third in the last six years and increased the number of people on antiretroviral treatment by 59% in the last two years alone.
“The pace of progress is quickening—what used to take a decade is now being achieved in 24 months,” said Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of UNAIDS. “We are scaling up faster and smarter than ever before. It is the proof that with political will and follow through we can reach our shared goals by 2015.”
For example, South Africa increased its scale up of HIV treatment by 75% in the last two years—ensuring 1.7 million people had access to the lifesaving treatment—and new HIV infections have fallen by more than 50 000 in just two years. During this period, South Africa also increased its domestic investments on AIDS to US$ 1.6 billion, the highest by any low- and middle-income country.
The report also shows that countries are assuming shared responsibility by increasing domestic investments. More than 81 countries increased domestic investments by 50% between 2001 and 2011. The new results come as the AIDS response is in a 1000 day push to reach the Millennium Development Goals and the 2015 targets of the UN Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS.
Declining new HIV infections in children
The area where perhaps most progress is being made is in reducing new HIV infections in children. Half of the global reductions in new HIV infections in the last two years have been among newborn children. “It is becoming evident that achieving zero new HIV infections in children is possible,” said Mr Sidibé. “I am excited that far fewer babies are being born with HIV. We are moving from despair to hope.”
In the last two years, new HIV infections in children decreased by 24%. In six countries––Burundi, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Togo and Zambia––the number of children newly infected with HIV fell by at least 40% between 2009 and 2011.
Fewer AIDS-related deaths
The report shows that antiretroviral therapy has emerged as a powerful force for saving lives. In the last 24 months the numbers of people accessing treatment has increased by 63% globally. In sub-Saharan Africa, a record 2.3 million people had access to treatment. China has increased the number of people on HIV treatment by nearly 50% in the last year alone.
There were more than half a million fewer deaths in 2011 than in 2005. The largest drops in AIDS-related deaths are being seen in countries where HIV has the strongest grip. South Africa saw 100 000 fewer deaths, Zimbabwe nearly 90 000, Kenya 71 000 and Ethiopia 48 000 than in 2005.
Impressive gains were also made in reducing tuberculosis (TB) related AIDS deaths in people living with HIV. In the last 24 months, a 13% decrease in TB-related AIDS deaths was observed. This accomplishment is due to record numbers of people with HIV/TB co-infection accessing antiretroviral treatment—a 45% increase. The report recognizes the need to do more to reduce TB-related AIDS deaths.
More investments
The report shows that countries are increasing investments in the AIDS response despite a difficult economic climate. The global gap in resources needed annually by 2015 is now at 30%. In 2011, US$ 16.8 billion was available and the need for 2015 is between US$ 22-24 billion.
In 2011, for the first time ever, domestic investments from low- and middle-income countries surpassed global giving for HIV. However, international assistance, which has been stable in the past few years, remains a critical lifeline for many countries. In 26 of 33 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, donor support accounts for more than half of HIV investments. The United States accounts for 48% of all international assistance for HIV and together with the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria provide the lion’s share of investments in HIV treatment. However, countries must take steps to reduce the high dependency on international assistance for HIV treatment programmes.
1000 days to go
An estimated 6.8 million people are eligible for treatment and do not have access. UNAIDS also estimates that an additional 4 million discordant couples (where one partner is living with HIV) would benefit from HIV treatment to protect their partners from HIV infection.
(L to R): Dr Bernhard Schwartländer, UNAIDS Director, Evidence, Strategy and Results Department , Michel Sidibé, UNAIDS Executive Director, Annemarie Hou, UNAIDS Director of Communications presenting the 2012 World AIDS Day report. Geneva, Switzerland, 20 November 2012.
Of the 34 million people living with HIV, about half do not know their HIV status. The report states that if more people knew their status, they could come forward for HIV services.
In addition, there is an urgent need to improve HIV treatment retention rates; reduce the cost of second- and third-line treatment; and explore new ways of expanding and sustaining access to treatment, including domestic production of medicines and innovative financing.
Despite the encouraging progress in stopping new HIV infections, the total number of new HIV infections remains high—2.5 million in 2011. The report outlines that to reduce new HIV infections globally combination HIV prevention services need to be brought to scale. For example, scaling up voluntary medical male circumcision has the potential to prevent an estimated one in five new HIV infections in Eastern and Southern Africa by 2025.
The report shows that HIV continues to have a disproportionate impact on sex workers, men who have sex with men and people who inject drugs. HIV prevention and treatment programmes are largely failing to reach these key populations.
“UNAIDS will focus on supporting countries to accelerate access to HIV testing and treatment. Now that we know that rapid and massive scale up is possible, we need to do more to reach key populations with crucial HIV services,” said Mr. Sidibé.
Labels: FRAUD, HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS
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COMMENT - The 'new response' we need, is to thoroughly examine the way we estimate national HIV prevalence rates. If only DHS surveys were used, which do not rely on the massive overrepresentation of positive results among pregnant women (which is what Zambia's HIV figures are largely based on), and then use a Western Blot confirmation test for positive ELISA (P24, P55) screening tests, then I would say Zambia's HIV prevalence rate will go from 13% to 1.3%, like the DRC's. (I quote
from the 2007 DHS of the DRC: " According to the EDS-RDC,
1.3 percent of the population age 15-49 years is HIV-positive. The prevalence is
1.6 percent for women and
0.9 percent for men. "
By contrast, Zambia's HIV data is heavily skewed to blood collected from pregnant women, who are not only not representative of the general population, but
whose pregnancy itself generates massive numbers of false positives on single ELISA HIV tests, as well as many other tests. (Read:
(Washington Post) How AIDS in Africa Was Overstated - Reliance on
Data From Urban Prenatal Clinics Skewed Early Projections, by Craig Timberg. This is what is skewing the Zambian data upwards.)
Men Tested 80,659 (15.7%)
Women Tested 430,607 (84.3%)
Pregnant Women tested 364,331 (71%)
Total Tested 511,266 (100%)
To quote from the research: "The high number of females tested was mostly from the PMTCT programme which accounted for 364,331". Source: ZAMBIA COUNTRY REPORT Monitoring the Declaration of Commitment on HIV and AIDS and the Universal Access Biennial Report.
We need to improve data analysis/testing, and the 'epidemic' will disappear. Meanwhile, the diseases caused by the poverty that comes from free market economics will be addressed at it's root - the massive impoverishment of the people through the stealing of the people's resources, from copper to land.
The solution is: 1) only use DHS surveys, no more PMTCT data, and 2) use Western Blot to confirm positive ELISA screening tests. Those are the new responses we desperately need. And then we can address the diseases of poverty, by addressing poverty itself.
Also read, from the Boston Globe in 2004: (BOSTON GLOBE) Estimates on HIV called too high - New data cut rates for many nations, by John Donnelly, Globe Staff | June 20, 2004
Read more here.
We need new HIV responses
By The Post
Fri 12 Oct. 2012, 14:00 CAT
We have been dealing with the problem of HIV and AIDS for close to 30 years. But nothing much seems to have been achieved in fighting this problem.
We are being told the rate of infection has reduced from 16.1 per cent to 14.3 per cent. And this small reduction is being celebrated when the problem is far much bigger because this is a reduction among those who have been tested. What more those who are not tested?
And among those who are tested and have been found to be positive, it is believed that only about 20 per cent are receiving treatment. What is happening to the other 80 per cent?
It is very clear that we are approaching this problem in a very piece-meal and partial way. We are not in any way trying to uproot the whole problem and live without it. No amount of HIV is desirable or should be tolerated in a country. We are talking about not tolerating the virus and not the people who carry the virus. This needs to be clearly understood because while the virus should never be tolerated, the people who carry it are human beings deserving our love, understanding and compassion. They should not be discriminated against in any way. And stigmatisation should have no place in our country; it shouldn't be tolerated in any way.
We have to be innovative or creative in the way we fight HIV. So far, we have been heavily dependent on other people's approaches or formulas simply because they come to us with deep pockets. And whatever they tell us, we do because they have the money. They employ our own people to champion their formulas and programmes. And our people can't question even that which is wrong, that won't work simply because that's what their paymasters want. If they object to what the financiers want, they will simply be fired and new people will be recruited in their place.
And this runs through private and public HIV programmes. This is so because even what may be said to be government programmes are also funded by donors. And it is the donors who call the tune. It is time we started putting our own public resources in the fight against HIV to save the lives of our people. Yes, donations and help from others are highly welcome and we should be grateful for that. But while we should have a sense of gratitude, we should also accept the fact that the people who are helping us are not super human and do not possess the sum total of human knowledge on the issue of HIV and AIDS. Today, the ideas and programmes of donors dominate our entire HIV campaign.
It is time we started designing our own programmes and reduced our dependence on others. This is not to say we should not co-operate or collaborate with others. What we are trying to say is let's learn from others but at the end of the day, let our decisions and actions be our own. This is a problem that we cannot deal with totally by ourselves. It is a problem that calls for international co-operation. But international co-operation does not deprive us of the right to national initiatives.
There is something we have learnt over the last 30 years of fighting HIV, let's put it to use. If over the last 30 years we have learnt nothing and we know nothing other than what the donors tell us, then we stand no chance of conquering HIV in the near future.
We shouldn't be afraid to come up with our own initiatives, programmes we think can work for us. As Dr Kenneth Kaunda taught us, "Let us be bold and not be afraid of creating precedents, for more often than not, today's precedent may well show as tomorrow's stroke of genius" (address to the 40th annual congress of Rotary International, Kitwe, April 4, 1965).
And as Dr Manasseh Phiri has urged, Zambia needs to start looking for its own resources to deal with the HIV problem.
The suggestion by Prof Paolo Marandola of putting everyone positive on treatment makes sense. One doesn't need to be a scientist to see sense in what is being suggested by Prof Marandola. Yes, putting everyone who is positive on treatment is going to be very expensive for us; it's going to increase our expenditure on the HIV problem. But this cost is not going to continue rising.
It is a cost that is going to start dropping or decreasing. As more and more people who are HIV positive are put on treatment, the rates of infection and re-infection are going to start dropping. And with it the number of people who will develop full-blown AIDS is also going to go down and eventually our costs will also go down. Within a period of five to seven years, this cost can drop to below what we are now spending on giving treatment to the few we are giving the treatment to.
We can't be satisfied with very little achievements. There is very little that has been achieved in this fight. And we shouldn't fool ourselves that we are on our way to conquering the HIV problem. We are far away from it. Until we start to address the problem in its entirety, and not in the partial way we are doing, we will continue moving backwards in very long strides. We can't say we are giving universal treatment to all those living with the virus when we are just giving treatment to a few of them with full-blown AIDS. The majority of the people who are positive, whether they know it or not, are not on treatment.
And the starting point is to get every citizen tested for HIV. In that way, we will know the full scope of the work we need to do and the financial resources we need to mobilise. The number of people testing for HIV is not increasing and it's actually going down. Every citizen needs to know his or her status.
And capacity needs to be created for us as a nation to give treatment to every citizen who is HIV positive so that their potential to transmit the virus to others is reduced as far as possible to zero. And also so that those who have developed AIDS are given treatment to reduce the possibility of them dying as a result of this.
While it cannot be denied that the numbers dying from AIDS have reduced, this does not in itself mean that the spread of HIV has in the same way been arrested.
Let's pay a lot of attention to the need for testing every citizen and putting every positive person on treatment. It is expensive but it will be worth the expense and it is not something totally beyond our reach. But as Felix Mwanza says, we need political will to start owning the HIV response in our country. And all this is possible with political will.
Labels: FRAUD, HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS
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COMMENT - This is an outrage. This is what you can expect from an MDC run Zimbabwe. Complete compliance to the population control agenda of Bill Gates and David Rockefeller. They are doing the same types of programmes in Malawi and Zambia.
Newly-born babies to be circumcised
19/07/2012 00:00:00
by Phyllis Mbanje
ZIMBABWE is planning to expand its circumcision campaign to include newly-born babies as part of the country’s fight against the spread of HIV and AIDS, a senior health ministry official has confirmed.
The ministry’s AIDS and TB unit co-ordinator,
Getrude Ncube, said
a pilot project targeting babies between one and 28 days old would be
launched before year end with the
full programme likely to be rolled out in 2014.
"The project will start in Harare and Bulawayo," Ncube said adding that, gradually, all maternity sites across the country would be circumcising newly born babies by 2014.
"Although circumcising neonates will not have an immediate an impact, results will show in 20 years’ time. Our sole aim is to try and reduce new HIV infections."
The programme was launched in 2009 with officials targeting to have 80 per cent of the male population circumcised by 2015.
Currently the programme is only targeting the 15-49 age group and around 700,000 men have already undergone the procedure against a target of 1.2 million by 2015.
Dozens of legislators were also recently circumcised as part of efforts to publicise the procedure which has become a key part of the country’s fight against HIV/AIDS
Circumcised men are said to be 60 per cent less likely to get infected with HIV but the latest Zimbabwe Demographic Survey indicated that the prevalence rate among circumcised men was higher than that of those who were uncircumcised.
Officials have also warned that the procedure should not be seen as a “licence” for irresponsible sexual behaviour.
“Circumcision is not a magic bullet but part of a prevention package,” the head of the head of the health ministry’s HIV and TB unit, Dr Owen Mugurungi said last month
“There is a lot of misconception out there and we are appealing to the media to help us communicate that circumcision is not a magic bullet.
“The media has to educate the community not to move around looking for circumcised men with the intention of not using protection when they have sex.
“Women are now looking for men who are circumcised and they do not want to use condoms. We do not want to create false hope.”
Zimbabwe is one of the countries worst affected by HIV/AIDS with around a million people believed to be infected with the disease which, if left untreated, can lead to the break-down of a patient's immune system.
The one million figure represents around 14 per cent of Zimbabwe's population but is a vast improvement on higher prevalence levels of around 23 per cent seen back in 2003.
Labels: CHILD ABUSE, CIRCUMCISION, FRAUD, HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS
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COMMENT - Yes, there is no proof that circumcision prevents HIV infection, and now evidence from the Zimbabwean Demographic and Health Survey supports evidence of marginally higher HIV infection rates among circumcised men. Quote:
" According to the latest Zimbabwe Health Demographic Survey 2010-2011, the HIV prevalence rate among circumcised males between the ages of 15 and 49 in Zimbabwe is higher than that of uncircumcised males. The prevalence rate among the circumcised is 14 percent while that of the uncircumcised is 12 percent. " Read
more here. UPDATE (July 19 2012): Now they want to
add child abuse to medical malpractice. It is already known that circumcision doesn't prevent HIV infection, now the want to circumcise all newborns. (NEWZIMBAWBE)
Newly-born babies to be circumcised, by Phyllis Mbanje.
Were we fooled?
Friday, 13 July 2012 19:35
Shamiso Yikoniko and Lincoln Towindo
Dozens of billboards emblazoned with the message “Circumcision — one of the top defenders against HIV and Aids” are now a common sight on major roads in Harare. Such loud advertisements, alongside an aggressive campaign in newspapers and on air, form part of a multi-million-dollar campaign aimed at encouraging sexually active men to get circumcised as a way of reducing the risk of contracting HIV.
Recently, Members of the House of Assembly and leading celebrities were roped into the campaign to try and encourage more men within the 15 and 49 age group to get circumcised.
Male circumcision is a surgical procedure for the complete removal of the foreskin of the male reproductive organ.
According to medical experts, the benefits of male circumcision include the reduction, by 60 percent, of the possibility of contracting HIV, the reduced chance of having sexually transmitted diseases, penile and cervical cancer and urinary tract infections in infants.
For some with a more discerning eye, the recent aggressive male circumcision campaign is an attempt to create a semblance of credibility for a programme which was initially suffering from mass apathy amid concerns over its safety and assumed effectiveness in fighting HIV and Aids.
Millions of dollars worth of donor funds were pumped into organisations such as Population Services International Zimbabwe (PSI), which is spearheading the campaign alongside the Government, to try and convince men to undergo circumcision.
Zimbabweans, keen to “reduce” their chances of contracting HIV by 60 percent, have embraced the idea with about 70 000 young men going under the blade in just under three years at a rate of over 10 circumcisions an hour, up from the initial rate of three an hour.
However, amid the swelling enthusiasm, Zimbabweans recently woke up to shocking revelations that the much-hyped “miracle solution” to the HIV and Aids pandemic might turn out, after all, to be pie in the sky.
According to the latest Zimbabwe Health Demographic Survey 2010-2011, the HIV prevalence rate among circumcised males between the ages of 15 and 49 in Zimbabwe is higher than that of uncircumcised males.
The prevalence rate among the circumcised is 14 percent while that of the uncircumcised is 12 percent.
In 2007, the World Health Organisation recommended male circumcision as an HIV preventive measure based on three sub-Saharan African randomised clinical trials into female-to-male sexual transmission.
In light of the latest research outcomes pointing to higher HIV and Aids prevalence among circumcised young men compared to their uncircumcised peers, many
Zimbabweans are understandably in shock after they were made to believe that it was supposed to work the other way round.
Observers have been quick to express apprehension over how promotion of circumcision has taken apparent precedence over other tried and tested methods such as abstinence and condom use, which have apparently taken a back seat.
They noted that the “Top Defender” adverts along with the others being flighted by PSI and its partners are promoting sexual bravado while subtly giving the impression of an “invisible condom” among those who would have been circumcised.
To many people, the advertisement and circumcision campaigns lack the finer details of what the procedure entails.
Mrs Patience Kunaka, inter-personal communication manager at PSI, however, insists that male circumcision reduces the risk of contracting HIV.
“The programme is effective. There is no need to panic. The whole issue is being blown out of proportion,” she said.
On the advertisement messages, Mrs Kunaka said the Government, through the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare, had the final say on the campaign materials.
“This is a programme that we are working on in partnership with the Government and we work hand in glove in terms of coming up with the proper message,” she said.
“However, at the end of the day they get to decide what is eventually communicated to the public.”
While the debate on the effectiveness of male circumcision rages on, Zimbabwe has over the past two decades managed to halve its HIV prevalence rate largely due to the promotion of abstinence and condom use. The question now on many people’s minds is whether there is a link between the advent of mass circumcision and the increase in HIV prevalence among circumcised youths.
However, what is clear to many is that circumcised youths have turned to sexually risky behaviour in the false belief that circumcision gives them an “invisible condom”.
Others are of the view that Africa might have been sold a ruse by the WHO in cahoots with Western researchers.
While it is becoming clear that enough may not have been done by individual African countries to ascertain the authenticity of the WHO-led research, many are now waking up to the sad reality that circumcision may not be the miracle solution that they had hoped it would be.
But could the circumcision campaign, which has been embraced so affectionately by African nations such as Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Namibia, be a distraction from the greater and more apparent challenge of eradicating the scourge?
Officially opening the 13th International Aids Conference held in Durban in 2000, former South African president Mr Thabo Mbeki said poverty was the underlying cause of reduced life expectancy, handicap, disability and starvation.
“Extreme poverty is the world’s biggest killer and the greatest cause of ill health and suffering across the globe,” he said.
While millions are dying of the disease every day, powerful lobby groups and global health campaigners have taken advantage of the desperation among developing countries eager to stave off the crippling effects of HIV and Aids.
Infinite campaigns, “new” medicinal discoveries and health innovations originating from powerful Western funders are being forced down the throats of African governments through funding-thirsty local NGO partners without much discernible benefits for most countries.
There is no doubt that the fight against HIV and Aids has turned into a multi-billion-dollar business and Zimbabweans should brace themselves for more “scientific” innovations that can help prevent the disease.
“In the fight against Aids, profiteering has trumped prevention. Aids is no longer simply a disease; it has become a multi-billion-dollar industry,” stated Sam Ruteikara, a known campaigner against HIV and Aids and, co-chair of Uganda’s National Aids-Prevention Committee.
Last year prominent HIV and Aids researchers Gregory J. Boyle and George Hill questioned, in a scathing research paper, the logic behind circumcision.
“Since male circumcision diverts resources from known preventive measures and increases risk-taking behaviours, any long-term benefit in reducing HIV transmission remains uncertain,” they concluded.
Boyle and Hill challenged the methodological, ethical and legal concerns of randomised clinical trials.
“Why were the trials carried out in countries where more intact men were HIV positive than in those where more circumcised men were HIV positive? Why were men sampled from specific ethnic groups? Why were so many participants lost to follow-up?” questioned Boyle and Hill.
These and several other questions remained unanswered prior to the recommendation of male circumcision. However, the programme was still foisted on poorer nations.
Powerful organisations such as UNAIDS, the WHO, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have been at the forefront of financing the circumcision crusade despite its apparent flaws.
According to researchers, the origination of male circumcision is not known with certainty. One school of thought proposes that it began as a religious sacrifice, as a rite of passage marking a boy’s entrance into adulthood, as a means of enhancing sexual pleasure or as an aid to hygiene where regular bathing was impractical.
Some believe that male circumcision began as a way of “purifying” individuals and society by reducing sexuality and sexual pleasure.
However, today circumcision is being practised in many countries across the globe for different reasons.
It was only recently that it was encouraged as a way of reducing the risk of contracting HIV following findings that the disease was not common in Moslem societies where infants are circumcised only a few days after birth.
But observers have called for more comprehensive Afro-centric research to be done before circumcision is adopted as the “top defender” against the disease.
Labels: CIRCUMCISION, FRAUD, HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS
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COMMENT - Idiocy. There is no proof whatsoever that circumcision prevents HIV infection, let alone reduce female to male transmission. The only longerm study into heterosexual transmission between sero-discordant couples comes from Nancy Padian, and she found no meaningful transmission at all. (1, 2) The data that claims effectiveness of circumcisin in preventing HIV infection is based on studies that were stopped short when the researchers had the results they wanted ('stopped short for benefit'). That means
there is no scientific evidence that circumcision prevents HIV infection. Khupe, Moyo reveal HIV status
Nip and tuck ... An MP being prepared for circumcision on Friday
22/06/2012 00:00:00
by Patience Nyangove
DEPUTY Prime Minister Thokozani Khupe and the Speaker of Parliament Lovemore Moyo have revealed they are HIV negative as part of a new drive by MPs to encourage people to undergo voluntary HIV testing in a bid to help curb stigmatisation and discrimination.
Some 181 Members of Parliament took part in the voluntary public HIV testing and counseling exercise Friday while another 23 were circumcised. Circumcision is said to reduce female-to-male transmission of HIV by up to 60 percent.
Khupe said she was initially scared of going for the test when Blessing Chebundo, who is chairs the Zimbabwe Parliamentarians against HIV and Aids (ZIPAH), phoned Thursday asking if she would take part in the programme.
“Initially I was afraid of going for HIV testing, but on second thought I said to myself if I took cancer head on I will manage HIV. When I got to Parliament, staff from the New Start centre where waiting for me,” she said.
“I was tested and told to come back for my results after 20 minutes. I went into the Speaker of Parliament’s office; I was so jittery that I said no to the food he offered me.
“After the 20 minutes I went to get my results and I was told I am HIV negative. Normally I do not get excited about things but yesterday I was excited about my test results.”
Moyo said he was lucky to test HIV negative.
“This public VCT and male circumcision exercise which began on Wednesday is a demonstration by Members of Parliament having heeded calls of HIV and Aids organisations and activists who called upon the leadership of this country to lead by example,” he said.
“In response to the calls the MPs have voluntarily submitted themselves to public testing and circumcision. Indeed this is a demonstration of leading by example. Yesterday (Thursday) I led from the forefront as head of Parliament.
“I now know my status. I was lucky to be tested HIV negative and I am happy. I say I am lucky because all of us do indulge and are also targets of this scourge.”
MDC-T MPs Gift Dzirutwe and Paul Mazikana were among the 23 lawmakers who stepped into a mobile clinic set up inside the parliament building to undergo circumcision.
“The only person I feel sorry for is my wife who for the next six weeks won’t have sex, however after two weeks I will try to cuddle her and see what happens,” said Dzirutwe.
Mazikana added: “It was painless, as I was lying on the bed and the team was cutting my instrument (penis) I was thinking of my wife who went through the same process while giving birth because she had stitches, so I have done this for her that she will reduce chances of getting cervical cancer and also that I am always smart.”
Zimbabwe is targeting to have 1.2 million boys and men circumcised by 2015 but campaigners have warned that the procedure should not be seen as a green light for people to have unprotected sex.
“Circumcision is not a magic bullet but part of a prevention package. There is a lot of misconception out there and we are appealing to the media to help us communicate that circumcision is not a magic bullet,” said Dr Owen Mugurungi and HIV and TB specialist with the Ministry of Health.
“The media has to educate the community not to move around looking for circumcised men with the intention of not using protection when they have sex.
“Women are now looking for men who are circumcised and they do not want to use condoms. We should not be creating false hope.”
Zimbabwe has 1.1 million people living with HIV, including 150,000 children, according to the National AIDS Council.
*********
(1) Padian, N. and Pickering, J., "Female-to-male transmission of
AIDS: a re-examination of the African sex ratio of cases",
JAMA 256:590
(2) Padian, N.S., Shiboski, S.C., Glass, S.O., Vittinghoff, E.
(1997), "Heterosexual transmission of human immunodeficiency virus
(HIV) in northern California: Results from a ten-year study", Am. J.
Epidemiol. 146:350-357.
Labels: CIRCUMCISION, HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS
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COMMENT - HIV in Africa is a
statistical construct. Instead of being alarmed at the high estimate of HIV infection nationwide, the government should demand proper testing procedures instead, which would lower national HIV prevalence rates enormously. First of all, no more Antenatal Clinic Surveys of pregnant women only, but statistically representative Demographic and Health Surveys.
Stop testing mainly women (84.3% of all tested were women, only 80,659 out of 511,266 were men; 71% of all tested were pregnant women at antenatal clinics - I quote: "The high number of females tested was mostly from the PMTCT programme which accounted for 364,331". This is not representative of the Zambian people in general.), and start doing statistically representative DHS surveys, and I guarantee you, HIV prevalence in Zambia will not be 14.3%, it will be well under 3%, probably much lower than that. Disproportionately testing women inflates both true positives and false positives in HIV surveys. How testing pregnant women overestimates HIV infection rates has been shown elsewhere in Africa,
How AIDS in Africa Was Overstated -
Reliance on Data From Urban Prenatal Clinics Skewed Early Projections, by Craig Timberg, Washington Post, April 6 2006; and in this report on
the UNICEF DHS in Swaziland, the presumption of HIV infection among girls was reduced from 32.5% (1/3 of all women), to 6%. Time for Zambia to only do DHS testing and use Western Blot confirmation tests of positive ELISA screening tests.
Secondly, use Western Blot confirmation tests, to test positive ELISA screening tests in these surveys. ELISA tests only for either p24 or p55. Western Blot tests for all 9 or 10 (depending how you count) HIV proteins - p18, p24, p39, p55, p32, p52, p68, p41, p120 and p160 - although a selection is made, which varies from country to country.
If Zambia only does DHS surveys and checks positive ELISAs in surveys, I am extremely confident that HIV rates in Zambia will go from 14% to under 3%. HIV/AIDS is one of the biggest scams of the 20th century. As an example, the DRC has an HIV infection rate of 1.3%, according to their 2007 DHS.
I quote
from the DRC's 2007 DHS: " According to the EDS-RDC,
1.3 percent of the population age 15-49 years is HIV-positive. The prevalence is
1.6 percent for women and
0.9 percent for men. "
Time to stop wasting everyone's time and resources, and start doing the tests right.
ARVs, condoms and new HIV infections
By The Post
Sun 11 Mar. 2012, 12:00 CAT
LAST week Professor Nkandu Luo lamented at what she said were
incredibly high new HIV infections of 226 daily. Nkandu concluded that "closing the tap on new HIV and AIDS infections" was the only way to defeat the scourge.
She warned that the HIV epidemic will continue for a very long time unless it was tackled differently. Nkandu also warned that unless the epidemic is addressed in a fundamental and meaningful way, Zambia's socioeconomic development will be at risk.
With a prevalence rate of 14.3 per cent, Nkandu's fears about the HIV epidemic are justified, have a basis, are not from without. And we therefore exhort all our leaders, political and otherwise, and all our people to meditate on this issue, delve deeply into it and with broad-mindedness listen to everyone, without anyone thinking they are the owners of the absolute truth.
There will no longer be one single thinker on this issue of HIV and AIDS. It is clear to us now that hundreds of thousands, millions of thinkers can make up the thinker our time needs on this issue.
It is clear that old ideas and approaches are failing to conquer HIV and AIDS. New ideas to prepare our people for the future are needed. There is need for a new awareness on this issue. We are not saying this to mean that we completely lack awareness on this issue.
What we are trying to say is that the issue of HIV and AIDS, given our experience of close to three decades, requires a lot more awareness, and that awareness will be built by adding together the awareness of what is happening and the awareness of what is going to happen.
It has to be built by adding together more than just one thought and the best ethical and humane ideas of more than one religion, the sum total of the preaching of many scientists, medical doctors, politicians.
Our battle is not only a battle for survival, it is not just surviving for the sake of surviving, no. Progressive people, well-meaning people have always fought for the future. It is clear that the methods that have been used so far to deal with the spread of HIV and AIDS are starting to compound the problem.
While it cannot be denied, and cannot be morally, medically, socially, politically or otherwise discouraged, Anti-Retroviral drugs (ARVs) are not helping to stop the spread of HIV and AIDS. While ARVs are helping many of our people live a much healthier and less painful life with the virus in their bodies, this is in some way making some feel they can live a normal sexual life, have unprotected sex and go on with their sex life as if nothing has happened to them.
ARVs have worked wonders for some of our people to a point where some of them no longer exhibit the clinical symptoms which used to warn others of the dangers they carried. Today, most of the people living with HIV or AIDS who are on ARVs look very fine; can't be suspected in any way of carrying the virus. This has opened them to having unprotected sex with others, to spreading the virus to their unsuspecting sexual partners.
People are no longer dying from HIV and AIDS at the rate they used to. This in itself means that those living with the virus - if there is no discipline, care or compassion on their part - can easily spread the virus to others thereby increasing, compounding the problem of HIV and AIDS in our country.
With more and more people looking well with ARVs, fewer and fewer people are testing for HIV - they don't seem to care about knowing their status and of those they want to have sex with.
Our campaign against the spread of HIV and AIDS also seems to be dying; there is no life in it. Activism about AIDS is also dying. And less money seems to be going into fighting the spread of HIV and AIDS. Those who used to fund the campaigns against HIV now seem to be more concerned with other problems like malaria.
It also seems that condoms are not doing much to halt the spread of this horrible virus. With this one cannot fail to stress the importance of preventative measures.
Clearly, in the present circumstances where no cure for HIV and AIDS is available, prevention seems to be the only sure way of combating this problem. We want to encourage the efforts undertaken in that direction and hope they can still be intensified.
We regret the fact that the emphasis that the Church had put on prevention was not taken very seriously. More emphasis was put on the use of condoms and on ARVs. It is most regrettable that little attention is paid to the fact that faithfulness to the Gospel's teaching on conjugal fidelity as the single most effective method of preventing the spread of this tragic illness.
The Church had strongly objected to the dissemination of the view that the use of condoms is the remedy against this epidemic. The Church warned that besides the immorality involved in the indiscriminate distribution and use of condoms, we must be aware of how much they contribute to spreading a false sense of security and encouraging promiscuity which can only aggravate the existing problem.
We may not totally agree with the church on this approach, but it cannot be denied that condoms and ARVs have serious challenges, they have not worked to expectations in halting the spread of the virus. New approaches, new remedies are required in addition to all these other approaches. For whatever condoms and ARVs have achieved, the truth is that the virus is still with us and it is spreading, infecting 226 new people every day.
A remedy has to be found. We cannot continue on this ostrich-like behaviour.
We have to face this problem head-on, once again. HIV and AIDS is clearly a disaster, effectively wiping out the development gains of the past decades and sabotaging the future. We once again have to move from rhetoric to action, and action at an unprecedented intensity and scale.
Let's get back the militancy we seem to have lost in this fight. Let's put more time and resources in this fight which we all thought we were winning but which the figures indicate otherwise.
Let's get more people tested. Let's get everyone back to work on this issue.
Labels: CORRUPTION, HIV/AIDS, NKANDU LUO, UNAIDS
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COMMENT - HIV infection rates are statistical constructs, and frankly, they are boondoggles - jobs for the boys. I hate to be the bearer of good news, but how can HIV infection in Zambia be 14.3%, when across the border
in the DRC, the national infection rate is
1.3%? I quote: " According to the EDS-RDC, 1.3 percent of the population age 15-49 years is HIV-positive. The prevalence is
1.6 percent for women and
0.9 percent for men. " Source:
Democratic Republic of the Congo Demographic and Health Survey 2007New HIV infection rate alarms Luo
By Abraham Kalito
Wed 07 Mar. 2012, 11:59 CAT
LOCAL government minister Professor Nkandu Luo says new HIV infections are incredibly high at 226 daily.
Speaking when she officiated at the Southern African AIDS Trust (SAT) at Mulungushi International Conference Centre, Prof Luo said "closing the tap of new HIV and AIDS infections" was the only way to defeat the scourge.
She said the HIV epidemic would continue for a long time unless it was tackled differently.
"Clearly, unless the epidemic is addressed in a fundamental and meaningful way, Zambia's socioeconomic development will be at risk. As you are aware, HIV prevalence remains high at 14.3 per cent; new HIV infections are also incredibly high at 226 on a daily basis," she said.
Prof Luo said the PF government was fully committed to "face the epidemic head-on" and that it would endeavour to provide an enabling environment that would allow all stakeholders to play their full part in the response.
"Already the government has increased the budgetary allocation to the health sector to 45 per cent from K1,772.9 billion in 2011 to K2,579.9 billion this year," she said.
Prof Luo also said the government was putting in place measures to ensure that Anti Retroviral drugs were available to anyone who needed them.
She said there was need to fight HIV from the communities and families and if possible to focus on individuals and urged SAT to continue sharing the outcomes of its work in strengthening community HIV and AIDS competence in the past 21 years.
Prof Luo is a medical practitioner and a researcher.
Labels: FRAUD, HEALTHCARE, HIV/AIDS, NKANDU LUO, UNAIDS
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COMMENT - The efficiency of circumcision in preventing HIV infection is entirely based on 3 surveys, 2 of which were 'stopped short for effect', which is stastitical jargon for saying that the researchers stopped the survey, as soon as they had the data they wanted. In other words, there is no scientific evidence that circumcision prevents HIV infection. There are billions of dollars in grants and aid (i.e., debt) available. UNAID$ is continuously involved in medical fraud. They are the ones who fought tooth and nail to maintain the Antenatal Clinic Surveys as a basis for estimating national HIV prevalence rates, even when it was clear ANC's massively overstate HIV prevalence among the general population in Africa. For detail on why these studies are unscientific,
see comments added below the article. Impact of male circumcision on HIV doubted
22/02/2012 00:00:00
by Gilbert Nyambabvu
MALE circumcision is
a dangerous distraction in the fight against HIV/AIDS, researchers have warned insisting that contrary to widespread claims the procedure only reduces transmission rates by no more than 1.3 percent.
Zimbabwe is among several countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have launched mass male circumcision campaigns after the World Health Organisation (WHO) and
UNAIDS recommended the procedure in 2007 as an effective HIVAIDS preventive measure.
The WHO/UNAIDS recommendation was based on clinical trials carried out in Kenya, South Africa and Uganda which suggested that circumcision could reduce female-to-male HIV transmission by up to 60 percent.
Thousands of men have undergone the surgical nip and tuck since Zimbabwe launched the campaign in 2009 with promoters enthusiastically claiming that if at least 80 percent of the adult male population was circumcised about 750 000 cases of HIV infections could be prevented.
But new research has cast doubt on the supposed efficacy of the procedure with an article in the December Australian Journal of Law and Medicine citing numerous flaws in the Kenya, South Africa and Uganda studies.
Researchers Gregory J. Boyle and Gregory Hill claimed the 60 percent reduction in transmission was only relative with the absolute reduction rate actually no more than 1.3 percent.
Boyle and Hill said: “What does the frequently claimed ‘60 percent relative reduction’ in HIV infections actually mean?
“Across all the three female-to-male trials, of the 5,411 men subjected to male circumcision, 64 (1.18 percent) became HIV positive while among the 5,497 controls 137 (2.49 percent) became HIV positive.
“So the absolute decrease in HIV infection was only 1.31 percent, which is statistically not significant.”
The authors of the article insisted that the WHO/UNAIDS recommendation “uncritically accepted” the findings of the Kenya, South Africa and Uganda trials, in the process ignoring a vast body of contradictory evidence.
“Examination of epidemiological data shows that male circumcision does not provide protection against HIV transmission in several sub-Saharan African countries including Cameroon, Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda and Tanzania all of which have higher prevalence of HIV infection among circumcised men,” they said.
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“In Malawi, the HIV prevalence rate is 13.2 percent among circumcised men and 9.5 percent among those who are intact. (Again) in Cameroon prevalence among those circumcised is 5.1 percent compare to 1.5 percent for those who are intact.
“If male circumcision reduces HIV transmission as the trials claim then why is HIV prevalence much higher in the United States (where most men are circumcised) than in developed countries where most men are intact (such as Europe, the United Kingdom and Scandinavia)?”
The article warns that relying on male circumcision in the fight against HIV/AIDS is especially dangerous for sub-Saharan Africa women because circumcised men could still acquire and transmit the virus to their sexual partners.
“Evidence suggests that mass circumcision programs may exacerbate the HIV epidemic among women (and) under these circumstances it would be irresponsible and unethical to advocate mass circumcision programmes in southern Africa,” the article concludes.
“Male circumcision is a dangerous distraction and a waste of scarce resources that should be used for known preventive measures (such as condoms which are 80 percent effective.”
******************************************************************************
Comments:
The evidence that circumcision stops HIV infection in men is extremely thin. The policy is based on three studies, all carried out around the same time, in South Africa, Kenya and Uganda.
In all cases the number of seroconverting men was very small compared to the study size, and in two cases studies were stopped early, increasing the risk of documenting bias. In their review of randomized clinical trials that have been stopped early, VM Montori et al concluded:
"RCTs stopped early for benefit are becoming more common, often fail to adequately report relevant information about the decision to stop early, and show implausibly large treatment effects, particularly when the number of events is small. These findings suggest clinicians should view the results of such trials with skepticism."
Randomized trials stopped early for benefit: a systematic review.
It is alarming that such a drastic policy as mass circumcision would be based on such thin evidence.
(South Africa, 2006) Randomized, Controlled Intervention Trial of Male Circumcision for Reduction of HIV Infection Risk: The ANRS 1265 Trial
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16231970
(Kenya, 2007) Male circumcision for HIV prevention in young men in Kisumu, Kenya: a randomised controlled trial.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17321310
(Uganda, 2007) Male circumcision for HIV prevention in men in Rakai, Uganda: a randomised trial.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17321311
CONCLUSIONS: RCTs stopped early for benefit are becoming more common, often fail to adequately report relevant information about the decision to stop early, and show implausibly large treatment effects, particularly when the number of events is small. These findings suggest clinicians should view the results of such trials with skepticism.
JAMA. 2005 Nov 2;294(17):2203-9.
Randomized trials stopped early for benefit: a systematic review.
^ Mills, J.; N. Siegfried (October 2006). "Cautious optimism for new HIV/AIDS prevention strategies.". Lancet 368 (9543): 1236.
doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(06)69513-5. PMID 17027724.
""The inferences drawn from the only completed randomised controlled trial (RCT) of circumcision could be weak because the trial stopped early.
In a systematic review of RCTs stopped early for benefit, such RCTs were found to overestimate treatment effects. When trials with events fewer than the median number (n=66) were compared with those with event numbers above the median, the odds ratio for a magnitude of effect greater than the median was 28 (95% CI 11--73).
The circumcision trial recorded 69 events, and is therefore at risk of serious effect overestimation. We therefore advocate an impartial meta-analysis of individual patients' data from this and other trials underway before further feasibility studies are done.".
Labels: CIRCUMCISION, FRAUD, HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS
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Do myths about African sexuality hurt the fight against Aids?
Stop me if you’ve heard this one.
Q: How many sizes do penises come in?
A: Five — “small”, “medium”, “large”, “extra-large”, and “does that come in white?”
That is a very funny joke, yes
African men have been the subject of European myth-making since the very earliest days of contact between the two continents. One of the hardiest and most enduring myths is that African sexuality is somehow different to its European counterpart. Such comparisons are not altogether unflattering to African men, tinged as they are with a certain fascination and awe. One can’t entirely blame African men for becoming complicit in this myth-making. Who wouldn’t want to be known as bigger, better, more potent, more virile, and more active than everyone else?
It's true - a six-pack is the least of my assets
When I was researching my MA dissertation on colonial women writers in the Eastern Cape, I was struck by the combination of fascination and repulsion these women demonstrated toward Xhosa men. They were continually awed by their impressive physiques and by the size of their … spears. And no, that’s not me being facetious. The literature is full of references to long Xhosa spears dangling perilously closely to the skirts of prim Victorian ladies. If the sexual innuendo were any more obvious, it would be dancing the samba in a G-string and pasties.
She was just fine until those Xhosa warriors walked past
But that was then and this is now. Surely white people are over this obsession by now?
Apparently not. The fascination with African sexuality is undimmed, and goes hand in hand with a strong desire to police it. Thus when public figures such as Steve Hofmeyr and Naas Botha are shown to have had unprotected affairs they become national icons. But when Jacob Zuma and Fikile Mbalula do the same, the media trot out phrases like “irresponsible in our current climate” and “setting a bad example”. Black men are seen as carriers of disease in a way that their white counterparts simply are not.
The last few weeks have seen a resurgence of public utterances supporting the contention that African sexual behaviour is driving the HIV/Aids pandemic in Africa. We’ve had Helen Zille’s now infamous “why should we pay for irresponsible sexual behaviours?” tweets, and more recently Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi declaring that “HIV/Aids is a gender-based disease that is spread by men, but suffered by women”.
Motsoaledi’s statement has been publically celebrated by black and white women alike, and he has been lauded for “finally speaking the truth”.
Fortunately, before the demonisation of African men could run entirely out of control, a corrective was administered by Francois Venter on Politicsweb. Venter argues with admirable calm the sheer improbability of the notion that African male sexual behaviour is single-handedly responsible for the fact that HIV infection rates in Africa are wildly higher than anywhere else in the world.
I like to think that if HIV/Aids were spread by sneezing, scientists would not have spent so much time urging African men to change their sneezing habits — to sneeze in one direction only, to sneeze less often, to sneeze into a tissue — and more time investigating why the virus was having such an utterly devastating effect on one particular region of the world. Have we been so blinded by the legacy of Victorian myth-making about African male sexuality that we can’t see past it? Have we simply swallowed the myth whole and allowed ourselves to believe that one segment of the human race somehow practises utterly different sexual behaviour to everyone else?
Just think how improbable that is for a moment. Sexual activity is one of the great human levellers, along with eating and sleeping. Is it really even slightly likely that one continent is doing it completely differently to all the others? How did we ever let ourselves get seduced by this red herring?
As Venter argues, it appears increasingly obvious that something else is at play here. I am not a scientist and cannot begin to guess what that might be. Suggestions have been floated such as a genetic predisposition to succumb to the disease, regional differences in the virulence of HIV strains, co-morbidity and the presence of other infections, the debilitating effects of poverty, and so on and so forth. It seems to me that these possibilities should be earnestly and energetically investigated with a view to finding the real reason why Africans are so hard hit by Aids.
The importance of spreading awareness and behaviour-modification programmes can obviously not be overstated, because the one thing that is not in doubt is that HIV/Aids is spread primarily by sexual contact. It has been pointed out to me that Venter doesn’t mention the high levels of sexual violence against women in South Africa, and the possible role that this may have in spreading the disease. But that fails to explain why a country like Botswana, which doesn’t have anything like our sexual violence statistics, should be even harder hit by HIV/Aids than we are.
It is a tremendous shame that the “African promiscuity” model as an explanation for HIV/Aids in Africa has been so unquestioningly accepted for so long. We can only be grateful that it is now being properly interrogated and that other explanations are finally being sought.
Labels: FRAUD, HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS
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COMMENT - If Zambia wants to lower it's HIV rate, start measuring it accurately. Use demographically representative Demographic and Health Surveys
(DHS) instead of the Antenatal Clinic Surveys of pregnant women only (championed by UNAID$). And start using a
Western Blot confirmation test to confirm positive ELISA screening tests. My guess is that
this would reduce national HIV prevalence rates in Zambia to well under 3%. ‘HIV prevalence rate in Zambia still high'
By Masuzyo Chakwe
Tue 29 Nov. 2011, 12:30 CAT
ZAMBIA cannot start celebrating the reduction in the HIV prevalence rate until it reaches a zero infection rate, says the Network of Zambian People Living with HIV and AIDS.
Commenting on the
2011 UNAIDS World AIDS Day report released in Berlin last week which indicated that Zambia was among Sub-Saharan African countries whose HIV infection rate had dropped, NZP+ programmes manager Kulima Banda said the HIV prevalence rate in Zambia was still high.
"It is actually higher in the urban areas than in the rural areas, so we can't start celebrating until we reduce the incidence rate of HIV. So right now we still have a long way to go," she said.
Banda said the 82,000 new HIV infections the country records annually was very high.
However, she said the reduction could be attributed to the multi sectoral approach by different players and stakeholders in ensuring that prevention, treatment and support was available.
Banda said what needed to be done now was to get more people tested because the entry point for prevention was people knowing their status.
"But at the moment only 13 per cent of the population knows their status. So it means that we have a big number of people that are HIV positive but do not know their status. So for us to reduce infection rates, it means that more people need to get tested and when they know their status, then the level of transmitting HIV will be further reduced," she said.
She said there was also need to get more people to access prevention services and to get people treated early.
Banda said the more people were put on treatment early, the less likely it was for them to transmit HIV.
She said there was also need to get more women to access prevention of mother to child transmission.
And Banda said the country was seeing more messages on HIV going out to the public but what was needed was more targeted messages for specific places and people.
"We need targeted messages for young people, for people in rural areas because what we are seeing now is that we are seeing more messages on TV but not everyone has a television set across the country and not everybody can access ZNBC and other TV stations. So let us have a bit more targeted information for everybody," she said.
Banda said she was happy that more messages on the drivers of the HIV pandemic which were quite real were being seen as they were making people realise that they had different responsibilities for HIV prevention.
Banda also said there was need for more promotion of the female condom across the country because there was a notion that people do not want to use it. "But I think it should be promoted more as the male condom is promoted," said Banda.
The report which was released by UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibe during an International Conference on HIV, titled "HIV Prevention without Barriers", revealed that in 2010, about 68 per cent of people living with HIV resided in sub-Saharan Africa, a region with only 12 per cent of the global population.
"In 22 sub-Saharan countries, research shows HIV incidence declined by more than 25 per cent between 2001 and 2009. This includes some of the world's largest epidemics in Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The annual HIV incidence in South Africa, though still high, dropped by a third between 2001 and 2009 from 2.4 per cent to 1.5 per cent," the report stated.
"Similarly the epidemics in Botswana, Namibia and Zambia appear to be declining. The epidemics in Lesotho, Mozambique and Swaziland seem to be leveling off, albeit at unacceptably high levels."
Labels: HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS
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KK urges against complacency in AIDS fight after UN report
By Joseph Mwenda
Mon 20 Sep. 2010, 14:00 CAT
Dr. Kenneth Kaunda has said the UN report that countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are leading a global decline in new HIV infections should not cause complacency among organisations fighting the pandemic.
Speaking in an interview in Lusaka yesterday, Dr. Kaunda said it was good news that the worst affected countries on the continent had seen a 25 per cent decrease in new HIV infection. UNAIDS said 22 countries in the world's worst affected region had seen a drop in new cases of more than 25 per cent.
“We are trying here, Africa is trying. I think we used to be at 20 per cent somewhere to 14 per cent and then… I think we are working very hard also,” observed Dr Kaunda, who as Republican president disclosed that his son, Masuzyo, had died of AIDS.
“But we are still a long way, we are still far from reaching a point where we can be proud and say we can rest now. No, not yet.”
Dr. Kaunda said the UN report should instead boost Africa and Zambia’s efforts in the fight against AIDS.
“It is good news and an indication that we are getting somewhere with the fight against AIDS, and the whole of Africa’s and Zambia particularly must fight as one in reducing the infection rates even further,” said Dr. Kaunda.
According to the UNAIDS report released over the weekend, the fall in HIV infections was as a result of greater awareness campaigns and better use of preventative measures.
UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibe, said the world was making "real progress" towards achieving the sixth Millennium Development Goal (MDG6) of halting and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015.
“For the first time change is happening at the heart of the ‘epidemic’. In places where HIV was stealing away dreams, we now have hope,” he said.
UNAIDS says there are now 5.2 million people worldwide receiving treatment for HIV/AIDS.
The report also said countries most severely affected by the pandemic could not handle the crisis with their own resources alone.
The agency said young people “are leading the prevention revolution by choosing to have sex later, having fewer multiple partners and using condoms”.
The report also said the use of male condoms has also doubled in the past five years, while "tradition is giving space to pragmatism" in many communities as they embrace male circumcision, which research shows has the potential to reduce HIV infections among men by nearly 60 per cent.
Meanwhile, UNAIDS has also noted that cases of HIV were increasing in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and among gay men in developed countries.
Labels: CORRUPTION, KENNETH KAUNDA, UNAIDS
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COMMENT - The use of the term 'Sub-Saharan Africa' by dr. James Chin is in fact also an overstatement. They now believe that a generalized heterosexual epidemic only exists in Southern Africa - West Africa, North Africa, East Africa and Central Africa are no longer believed to have HIV/AIDS epidemics. The epidemics of Kenya and Uganda have now officially disappeared. The population of Uganda's Rakai District, once believed to be the epicenter of AIDS in Africa and the most studied district in Africa, has high population growth, even though it was often predicted that it would be wiped out by AIDS. The same everywhere else, including in Southern Africa. When will they admit that the way they use the tests and how they conduct surveys are crucial into manipulating the data? The use of antenatal clinic surveys of pregnant women only, when pregnancy is known to create false positives is telling. So is the use of a single, unconfirmed ELISA screening test in surveys - again, with the effect of massively overstating HIV positive returns in these surveys. Lastly, why would Southern Africa be so different from West Africa and East Africa, or Central Africa (Uganda)? Do people have sex differently than anywhere else?
Nonsense. There is no heterosexual epidemic of HIV/AIDS, not in Southern Africa, or anywhere else in the world.
The authorities have lied, and I am not glad
Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, author of 1987's
The Truth About the AIDS Panic, says it is
a shame that AIDS insiders did not expose the myths and opportunism of the AIDS industry earlier. But still, better late than never.
by Dr Michael FitzpatrickThere is a widely accepted view that Britain was saved from an explosive epidemic of heterosexual AIDS in the late 1980s by a bold campaign initiated by gay activists and radical doctors and subsequently endorsed by the government and the mass media.
According to advocates of this view, we owe our low rates of HIV infection today largely to the success of initiatives such as the 'Don't Die of Ignorance' leaflet distributed to 23million households and the scary 'Tombstones and Icebergs' television and cinema adverts (though they are always quick to add that we must maintain vigilance and guard against complacency).
Now former AIDS industry insiders are challenging the imminent heterosexual plague story and many of the other scare stories of the international AIDS panic. James Chin, author of The AIDS Pandemic: The Collision of Epidemiology with Political Correctness, is a veteran public health epidemiologist who worked in the World Health Organisation's Global Programme on AIDS in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Elizabeth Pisani, a journalist turned epidemiologist and author of The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS, spent most of the past decade working under the auspices of UNAIDS, which took over the global crusade against HIV in 1996.
Once prominent advocates of the familiar doomsday scenarios, both have now turned whistleblowers on their former colleagues in the AIDS bureaucracy, a 'byzantine' world, according to Pisani, in which 'money eclipses truth'.
"Pisani reminds readers that 'public health is inherently a somewhat fascist discipline'"
For Chin, the British AIDS story is an example of a 'glorious myth' - a tale that is 'gloriously or nobly false', but told 'for a good cause'. He claims that government and international agencies, and AIDS advocacy organisations, 'have distorted HIV epidemiology in order to perpetuate the myth of the great potential for HIV epidemics to spread into "general" populations'. In particular, he alleges, HIV/AIDS 'estimates and projections are "cooked" or made up'.
While Pisani disputes Chin's claim that UNAIDS epidemiologists deliberately overestimated the epidemic, she admits to what she describes as 'beating up' the figures, insisting - unconvincingly - that there is a 'huge difference' between 'making it up (plain old lying) and beating it up'. Pisani freely acknowledges her role in manipulating statistics to maximise their scare value, and breezily dismisses the 'everyone-is-at-risk nonsense' of the British 'Don't Die of Ignorance' campaign.
Chin's book offers a comprehensive exposure of the hollowness of the claims of the AIDS bureaucracy for the efficacy of their preventive campaigns. He provides numerous examples of how exaggerated claims for the scale of the HIV epidemic (and the risks of wider spread) in different countries and contexts enable authorities to claim the credit for subsequently lower figures, as they 'ride to glory' on curves showing declining incidence.
As he argues, 'HIV prevalence is low in most populations throughout the world and can be expected to remain low, not because of effective HIV prevention programmes, but because. the vast majority of the world's populations do not have sufficient HIV risk behaviours to sustain epidemic HIV transmission'.
By the late 1980s, it was already clear that, given the very low prevalence of HIV, the difficulty of transmitting HIV through heterosexual sex and the stable character of sexual relationships (even those having multiple partners tend to favour serial monogamy), an explosive HIV epidemic in Britain, of the sort that occurred in relatively small networks of gay men and drug users, was highly improbable, as Don Milligan and I argued in 1987 (1).
As both Chin and Pisani indicate, high rates of heterosexually spread HIV infection remain the exceptional feature of sub-Saharan Africa (and parts of the Caribbean where a particular pattern of concurrent networks of sexual partners together with high rates of other sexually transmitted infections facilitated an AIDS epidemic. Though this has had a devastating impact on many communities, Chin suggests that HIV prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean has been overestimated by about 50 per cent. The good news is that, contrary to the doom-mongering of the AIDS bureaucracy, the rising annual global HIV incidence peaked in the late 1990s and the AIDS pandemic has now passed its peak.
"From AIDS to climate change, experts have been complicit in the prostitution of science to propaganda"
Most significantly, the sub-Saharan pattern has not been replicated in Europe or North America, or even in Asia or Latin America, though there have been localised epidemics associated with gay men, drug users and prostitution, most recently in South-East Asia and Eastern Europe.
Many commentators now acknowledge the gross exaggerations and scaremongering of the AIDS bureaucracy. It is clear that HIV has remained largely confined to people following recognised high-risk behaviours, rather than being, in the mantra of the AIDS bureaucracy, a condition of poverty, gender inequality and under-development.
Yet they also accept the argument, characterised by Chin as 'political correctness', that it is better to try to terrify the entire population with the spectre of an AIDS epidemic than it is to risk stigmatising the gays and junkies, ladyboys and whores who feature prominently in Pisani's colourful account.
For Chin and Pisani, the main problem of the mendacity of the AIDS bureaucracy is that it leads to misdirected, ineffective and wasteful campaigns to change the sexual behaviour of the entire population, while the real problems of HIV transmission through high-risk networks are neglected. To deal with these problems, both favour a return to traditional public health methods of containing sexually transmitted infections through aggressive testing, contact tracing and treatment of carriers of HIV. Whereas the gay activists who influenced the early approach of the AIDS bureaucracy favoured anonymous and voluntary testing, our whistleblowers now recommend a more coercive approach, in relation to both diagnosis and treatment.
Pisani reminds readers that 'public health is inherently a somewhat fascist discipline' (for example, quarantine restrictions have an inescapably authoritarian character) and enthusiastically endorses the AIDS policies of the Thai military authorities and the Chinese bureaucrats who are not restrained from targeting high risk groups by democratic niceties.
The problem is that, given the climate of fear generated by two decades of the 'everyone-is-at-risk nonsense', the policy now recommended by Chin and Pisani is likely to lead to more repressive interventions against stigmatised minorities (which will not help to deter the spread of HIV infection).
Chin confesses that he has found it difficult 'to understand how, over the past decade, mainstream AIDS scientists, including most infectious disease epidemiologists, have virtually all uncritically accepted the many "glorious" myths and misconceptions UNAIDS and AIDS activists continue to perpetuate'.
An explanation for this shocking betrayal of principle can be found in a 1996 commentary on the British AIDS campaign entitled 'Icebergs and rocks of the "good lie"'. In this article, Guardian journalist Mark Lawson accepted that the public had been misled over the threat of AIDS, but argued that the end of promoting sexual restraint (especially among the young) justified the means (exaggerating the risk of HIV infection): as he put it, 'the government has lied and I am glad' (2).
This sort of opportunism is not confined to AIDS: in other areas where experts are broadly in sympathy with government policy - such as passive smoking, obesity and climate change - they have been similarly complicit in the prostitution of science to propaganda.
It is a pity that Chin and Pisani did not blow their whistles earlier and louder, but better late than never.
Dr Michael Fitzpatrick is the author of MMR and Autism: What Parents Need to Kno (buy this book from Amazon(UK)) and The Tyranny of Health: Doctors and the Regulation of Lifestyle (buy this book from Amazon(UK)).
The Wisdom of Whores, by Elisabeth Pisani, is published by Granta Books. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).)
The AIDS Pandemic: The Collision of Epidemiology with Political Correctness, by James Chin, is published by Radcliffe Publishing Ltd.
(1) Michael Fitzpatrick and Don Milligan, The Truth About The Aids Panic, 1987
(2) Mark Lawson, 'Icebergs and rocks of the "good" lie', Guardian, 24 June 1996
Labels: AIDS, CORPORATIONS, JAMES CHIN, UNAIDS
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