AIDS

When it comes to using Holocaust metaphors, the power of suggestion is a loaded and delicate thing. Striking the right chord becomes ever more slippery when, for example, you use the most recognizable image of Holocaust evil, Adolf Hitler, to illustrate the recklessness of unprotected sex. But you just about lose any hope of keeping that line clean and clear when you make a Hitler sex video for an AIDS PSA. Which is what a small German AIDS awareness group called, Regenbogen e.V, did. 

While the Telegraph says the clip appears to be a "typical advert" at first glance, I imagine most American viewers won't agree. The act of intimacy being portrayed is basically soft-core porn. It shows two very naked hard-bodies engaged in some very steamy sex. (Warning: this video ain't for the kiddies and is probably not safe for work.) The commercial's obvious-to-the-point-of-insult message, that unprotected sex is very, very dangerous, is hammered home with a rather indelicate ... bang. As the couple reaches climax, the man's face is revealed -- it's Hitler. Scary, indeed.

Not surprisingly the ad, released in Britain to coincide with World AIDS day, has created a storm of controversy. A spokesman for the National AIDS Trust, the group that coordinates World AIDS Day in Britain, had this to say: 

Of course there are many HIV organisations that run their own campaigns, however I think the advert is incredibly stigmatising to people living with HIV who already face much stigma and discrimination due to ignorance about the virus.

"On top of this it fails to provide any kind of actual prevention message (e.g. use a condom) and may deter people to come forward for testing.

"The advert is also inaccurate because in the UK thanks to treatment HIV is a manageable condition that does not necessary lead to AIDS.

Hans Weishäupl, creative director of das comitee, the group that created the ad for Regenbogen e.V, defended the work:  

A lot of people are not aware that Aids is still murdering many people every day. They wanted a campaign which told young people that it is still a threat," he said. "In Germany, Hitler is the ugliest face you can use to show evil." 

Provocative it may be, but successful? I doubt it. Would it be a gross and malicious misinterpretation to use this ad to say that people who have unprotected sex, or people with HIV or AIDS, are as evil as Hitler? Absolutely. Is it a stretch to say there are folks out there who will do just that? Nope.

Using the evil führer's personage for good is a tricky business, one that should perhaps be left to the Charlie Chaplins of the world. 

229,524, according to the AIDS & Rights Alliance for Southern Africa in a PR video calling out the African Union and African leaders for not spending enough on health.

The organization also calculates that Robert Mugabe's 85th birthday party could have covered 10,501 TB treatment courses. See the rest in this video set to Akon's "I'm So Paid":

Hat tip: Jina Moore

Human Rights Watch has issued a statement asking for the removing of contentious proposals in a draft bill before the Rwandan parliament. Health and human rights director Joe Amon said that if enacted, the law would require the forced sterilization of mentally disabled persons, mandatory HIV/AIDS testing for couples who plan to wed, for married individuals at his or her spouse's request, and for children or incapacitated persons for whom it is deemed "necessary" without their consent. He said:

While Rwanda has made notable progress in fighting stigma and responding to the AIDS epidemic, and has pledged to advance the rights of persons with disability, forced sterilization and mandatory HIV testing do not contribute to those goals. These elements of the bill undermine reproductive health goals and undo decades of work to ensure respect for reproductive rights.

In recent years Rwanda has made not simply strides but rather leaps in combating HIV/AIDS. UNAIDS figures reveal a dramatic drop in national adult HIV prevalence, from nine percent in 1990 to a little under three percent in 2007.

Essentially, Rwanda's efforts to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS need to be decoupled from any attempts at compulsory sterilization or testing. If undertaken in a widespread manner or as part of systematic practice as the bill intends, forced sterilization is regarded as a crime against humanity by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court to which Rwanda is party. Rwanda has also signed and ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Optional Protocol as of December 15, 2008.

Deputy speaker of the Rwandan parliament Damascene Ntawukuriryayo has subsequently denied the existence of the bill.

Brent Stirton/Getty images

Atlantic blogger and soon-to-be New York Times columnist Ross Douthat was not happy at all that my colleague David Rothkopf put Pope Benedict on his list of the world's biggest losers because of his comments on AIDS and condoms:

There are many other NGOs working in Africa that proceed from different premises, and take a different attitude toward matters sexual as a result, and if David Rothkopf prefers their approach that's perfectly understandable. But unless he's willing to tell the Catholic Church that it should fold up its charitable operations in the developing world and go home, I'd prefer to be spared the lectures on how the Pope is responsible for "massive death and suffering" among populations for whom Catholic institutions have provided lifelines beyond counting over the years, just because he isn't willing to to use his pulpit to preach the importance of playing it as safe as possible, health-wise, while you're committing what the Church considers mortal sin.

Rothkopf is more than able to defend his own posts, but I think that Douthat is missing the real reason why the Pope's comments upset so many people. As Bill Easterly pointed out, the first part of the Pope's statement, that AIDS is "a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms," is a perfectly legitimate statement. Condoms alone won't solve anything. It's his next clause, that the distribution of condoms "even aggravates the problem" which is more problematic.

Here's more Easterly:

From the standpoint of the individual, this is obvious nonsense, you are much less likely to get AIDS if you use a condom. The reason that mass condom distribution has not worked is that far too many people don’t use the condoms. One among the many possible reasons that people don’t use condoms is that religious leaders like the Pope tell them not to, or they believe unscientific statements like the Pope’s that “condoms aggravate the problem.” So it is tragically circular for the Pope to condemn the condom campaigns for not working, when one reason they don’t work is that the Pope has previously condemned condoms.

So in response to Douthat, the Pope was not "proceeding from a different premise" than those who promote condom use, he was making a statement that could at the very least be interpreted as arguing against the fact that condoms use can prevent the transmission of AIDS. Until condom proponents start telling people that they're obligated to have sex, the Pope's defenders are on shaky ground when they say he's just offering another approach.

But don't take my word for it. Roseli Tardelli, a Brazilian AIDS activist who's been educating people on these issues for over a decade, has a new piece on The Argument blog, about how the Pope's words have set her work back years.

BORIS HORVAT/AFP/Getty Images

Depending on where you stand, President Barack Obama's Friday decision to lift the Mexico City Policy, better known as the global gag rule, was either wonderful or appalling. For the last seven years, the gag rule stipulated that charities promoting and supporting abortion services could not recieve funding from the U.S. Government. Now, they can. I say: it's about time.

My position is not drawn from either side of the abortion debate. It's drawn from what I saw as a reporter and as a person living in Nigeria. HIV/AIDS is the open secret there -- a growing problem with a whispered name.

To put it politely, the gag rule created a rift -- at times gaping -- between U.S. government-funded projects and those of private NGOs trying to prevent HIV infection. The U.S. government brought the buck -- President Bush's PEPFAR program boasted $39 billion for HIV/AIDS work -- but it also brought rules about how to get the work done. The foundations brought less money and a sometimes different approach. Both sides fought to win the support of the local government for their strategies. From what I saw, that debate could get ugly. Friends working in the field were frustrated and saddened by the result: inertia and politics, instead of posters and condoms.

There was one particular problem that brought it home for me. In 2006, a Nigerian lawmaker announced that 55,000 women die in the country each year from unsafe illegal abortions. The evidence was everywhere -- from women that my colleagues and I met to Nigerian films on exactly that topic.

What was the best way to get that statistic down? Some will say abstinence. But sex is not always a choice. It's in those situations where women seek -- or are forced by their partners to seek -- unsafe abortions. Some counseling and a sterile doctor's office would go a long way.

That's just one example. The real "gag" was that you didn't hear a lot of stories about birth control or HIV prevention in Nigeria. So my few are only the beginning. Maybe now we'll start to hear a few more.

Photo: TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images

What happened to the good old days when kids just used to sniff glue to get high? The BBC reports that South African teens have turned the trend of substituting prescriptions drugs for recereational drugs -- like snorting Ritalin -- into an unexpected venture: smoking anti-retroviral HIV/AIDS drugs to get lit.

Aside from the obvious reasons why this recently discovered habit -- grinding up the pills into powder and then mixing it with pain killers or smoking it with marijuana -- is so distressing, teenage users are getting their "stash" from HIV/AIDS patients and health care workers responsible for distributing the medication.

This raises serious questions about the infrastructure for a crucial medical service already stunted by reluctant leaders and lack of funding. It also means that people who need these drugs to stay healthy aren't taking them as prescribed, while others, barely able to get these drugs as it is, have a new obstacle to contend with -- users who are willing to pay and the health care workers willing to sell what precious drugs they have to the highest bidder.

I hate to think that Barbara Hogan, South Africa's newly appointed health minister, upon whom many hopes have been pinned, will be wasting any energy or valuable dollars on keeping drugs away from a foolish few, when so many are in real need.

GEOFF ROBINS/AFP/Getty Images

The juxtaposition of two of today's headlines pertaining to AIDS in Africa is glaring. One touted a new strategy for HIV testing that could slow, if not altogether halt the spread of the virus, while the other released the devastating findings of a Harvard University study which linked 365,000 premature deaths to former South African President Thabo Mbeki's refusal to acknowledge scientific evidence of HIV/AIDS's viral capability.

The study's findings, published in The New York Times yesterday, blamed the South African government and, in particular Mbeki, for not only being lax in making the anti-retroviral drugs widely available but for flatly denying their importance. Mbeki's claimed that AIDS was caused by malnutrition and that treatments were toxic.

The promising new treatment model, which proposes a combo of HIV screening of every adult and treatment for all those who test positive, was published this week in the British journal Lancet.

If employed successfully, the study predicts that "transmission rates would fall from 20 new cases per 1,000 people per year to 1 case per 1,000 in about a decade." A biostatistician at WHO, Reuben M. Granich, said that if aggressively pursued, the testing-and-treatment approach could be "the greatest strategy for reducing transmission" of HIV.

While the method and implication of such widespread, regular testing (even if on a voluntary basis) has raised eyebrows and serious doubts about its viability, at least it offers a certain rational and sense of control. Treatments of this kind are part of the reason why the World Health Organization predicts fewer AIDS fatalities in the next two decades. Previous attempts at prevention techniques in many African countries -- sex education, abstaining, information about circumcision -- haven't proved successful.

And in the face of blatant ignorance like Mbeki's, why would anyone be surprised?

This is beyond disturbing:

Lawmakers in Indonesia's remote province of Papua have thrown their support behind a controversial bill requiring some HIV/AIDS patients to be implanted with microchips -- part of extreme efforts to monitor the disease.

Health workers and rights activists sharply criticized the plan Monday.

But legislator John Manangsang said by implanting small computer chips beneath the skin of ''sexually aggressive'' patients, authorities would be in a better position to identify, track and ultimately punish those who deliberately infect others with up to six months in jail or a $5,000 fine.

The idea of implanting anyone with a microchip against their will is bad enough, but I can only imagine the possibilities for abuse on a government panel tasked with deciding which patients are "sexually aggressive" enough to qualify.