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. 

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

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

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?

GIANLUIGI GUERCIA/AFP/Getty Images

AIDS activists had reason to celebrate last Friday. South Africa's Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang -- the woman FP named one of the world's worst advisors this summer -- was fired by the country's new president. In a country with one of the world's highest AIDS rates, it was Tshabalala-Msimang who stated publicly that she did not support antiretroviral medicines and that a diet of lemon, beet root, and garlic could effectively treat the disease.  

Although South Africa's woeful AIDS policy hasn't been all Manto's doing, it's still good news that she's no longer at the helm. It's unclear how much health experience her successor Barbara Hogan has, but as one MP put it last week: "Anyone is better than Manto."

YOAV LEMMER/AFP/Getty Images

South Africa might be giving its all to prepare for the 2010 World Cup, but some think it has stepped out of bounds. A proposal to legalize prostitution there before the tournamount starts has several opposition parties and religious groups in the country crying foul, both for fear that the practice could become permanent and because, in the words of one critic, it "defies the word of God."

The hullabaloo started back in January when George Lekgetho, a member of Parliament, made a pitch for legalization at a committee meeting. He pointed out that prostitution is legal in Germany, the 2006 World Cup Host, to bolster his argument, adding that legalization would mean less rape and "added tax revenue."

Though most of the other MPs laughed off the proposal, the idea has gained major ground with Durban's local government. South Africa's third largest city boasts a sizeable prostitute population, which legalization advocates claim would be better protected if the trade was allowed.

That's questionable. Legalization isn't likely to make things any better for the thousands of young girls in the trade, who are typically at the mercy of pimps and dismal working conditions in the widely impoverished country. Even in comparatively well-off Germany, legalization brought its own share of problems during the cup, including how to handle reported increases of sex-trafficking from Eastern Europe.

Nor does South Africa's astronomical AIDS rate help the argument much, since legalization probably won't be accompanied by widespread promotion of "safer-sex practices." This, after all, is a country where the likely future president "took a shower" after having sex with an HIV-positive woman to prevent infection.

In any case, South Africa has plenty of other battles to wage before 2010. The skyrocketing costs of stadium construction, constant power outages, and consistently high petty and violent crime rates in major cities are sure to keep the South African government occupied until the tournament kicks off. Or else thousands of tourists and millions of TV-watchers worldwide could get a dismal view of a country that has held so much hope.

In December 2006, Jeremiah S. Johnson, 25, began serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Rozdilna, Ukraine, a town near the border with Moldova. When he started, he was HIV negative. In January of this year, he had a midservice medical exam in Kiev and agreed to an HIV test. It came back positive. The Peace Corps told him to pack his bags and return to the United States.

Johnson says the Peace Corps director for Ukraine told him he had to go home because Ukraine doesn't allow HIV-positive foreigners to work there. (If so, this isn't unique. As blogger Andrew Sullivan has pointed out repeatedly, the United States has its own fair share of restrictions on HIV-positive immigrants and tourists.)

Back in Washington, Johnson had an end-of-service medical exam and received written notification that he was being "medically separated" from the Peace Corps. He contacted the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the organization sent a demand letter to the Peace Corps saying that it is violating the Rehabilitation Act, which prohibits discrimination based on disability. (The State Department, by the way, changed its policies just this February to permit HIV-positive Americans, on a case-by-case basis, to work in the Foreign Service.)

Johnson doesn't have any physical symptoms of HIV. He and the ACLU say the Peace Corps did not assess him to determine if he could continue serving with reasonable accommodations. Additionally, his requests to be assigned to another country were denied.

What do you all think? A few questions come to mind:

• How easy would it be for Johnson to receive medical monitoring of his condition in a poor country (granted, the medical infrastructure in some Peace Corps countries, such as Romania and Bulgaria, is probably stronger than in, say, Burkina Faso and Guinea)?
• What if living in an underdeveloped country aggravated his condition -- would there be liability issues?
• Does how he contracted HIV -- for example, if he was injecting recreational drugs -- make a difference (the manner in which he became HIV positive hasn't been disclosed)?

For more on controversies about the Peace Corps, check out "Think Again: Peace Corps" and some of the reactions the piece prompted.

SONNY TUMBELAKA/AFP/Getty Images

Soaring HIV/AIDS infection rates and sexual violence have forced African nations to get creative with condoms. You've got Pronto condoms, which can be put on in less than one second, before "the mood is halfway out the window." And then there's the anti-rape condom, blogged about here at Passport, which has "razor-sharp teeth [that] fasten on the attacker's penis if he attempts penetration."

Now, in Ethiopia, where HIV/AIDS infection rates are above 2 percent, a U.S. charity has developed a coffee-flavored condom. DKT International came up with the prophylactic — which supposedly tastes like a macchiato — after receiving complaints about the smell and taste of traditional latex condoms. Despite criticism from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, in September more than 300,000 of the condoms were sold at 10 cents a piece.

The condoms have also tapped into Ethiopian nationalism, as coffee was supposedly invented there. As one university student put it, "It is about time to use an Ethiopian flavor for beautiful Ethiopian girls."

DKT has developed similar products for other parts of the world. In China, they offer condoms that smell and taste like sweetcorn. In Indonesia, they offer a condom that smells like the durian fruit (which, incidentally, absolutely stinks, and is probably the last thing anyone would want to smell before business time).

What's next? Pilsner-flavored condoms in the Czech Republic? Plantain in the tropics? But hey, if it gets more people to have safe sex, why not?

Photo: National Security Archive

One of the oddest cultural trends of our time is the Cult of Che Guevara. I was just down in Peru, where street vendors proudly peddle Chinese-made tapestries and t-shirts bearing Che's image to U.S. college students. Hollywood—most notably Robert Redford—has glamorized Che on screen. And in more than one European hamlet will you find a "Che Guevara Bar," inevitably attracting hipsters with the same, sad tapestries, fake Cuban cigars, and cheap rum.

Today, the Cult of Che hit a new low, when a 3-inch lock of his beard and other items went up for sale at a Dallas auction house. The starting bid? $100,000. Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez is rumored to be among the potential interested bidders. The seller is Gustavo Villoldo, a retired CIA operative of Cuban heritage who was involved in Che's capture and was present when Che was buried. Villoldo says he cut the lock of hair because, "I wanted proof that I had completed my mission." His motive for selling it now appears to be profit. (This month marks the 40th anniversary of Che's death.)

MIKE CLARKE/AFP/Getty Images

It's disappointing to see Che glorified in this way. The man was a Marxist-Leninist of the worst kind: He presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads; he assisted in the persecution of homosexuals [see note below]; he imprisoned dissidents. Che preached a dangerous breed of martyrdom and hatred reminiscent of the most radical jihadists of today's Middle East. You may see some familiar themes in this, one of Che's choicest lines:

Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become...."

Today, we seem intent on remembering Che as a liberator in the Bolivarian vein, a freedom fighter. He was not. As Paul Berman has elegantly documented, Che inspired many middle-class Latin Americans to take up arms in insurgent campaigns that did nothing more than set the cause of Latin American democracy back decades. That a tiny lock of his hair can sell in Texas (of all places) for six figures is a sad comment indeed on just how severely his legacy has been distorted.

Editor's Note: This post was changed by the editor to avoid any confusion. It originally said that Che "assisted in the persecution of homosexuals and AIDS victims." Many readers asked about the original language. Mike explains here.

Kasmauski/National Geographic

Five years ago, Botswana was an HIV/AIDS basket case. It had the highest incidence of the disease in the world. Almost 40 percent of its adult population was infected. Average life expectancy had fallen below 40 years. Botswana was battling against "extinction."

In response, the government, with help from international agencies, embarked upon a campaign to contain the spread of the virus. The results are now beginning to show, and they suggest that Africa's troubles aren't always insurmountable.

Botswana has reduced the rate of HIV transmission from mother to child to below 4 percent through vigilant testing programs followed by drug treatments for mothers who are infected. Thirty-four percent of Botwana's pregnant women—around 14,000 people—are HIV-positive, and the chances of passing on HIV to a baby is between 30 and 35 percent when there's no intervention. In other words, Botswana's effective response has saved thousands of babies from contracting the virus every year. Botswana is now within the range of the United States and Europe, where less than 2 percent of babies born to HIV-positive mothers have the virus.

Botswana is also looking up in terms of other indicators. The adult HIV/AIDS prevalence rate has dropped to around 24 percent (it's still high, but significantly better than five years ago), and life expectancy has increased 10 years, to over 50. Obviously, there's still a long way to go. But it just goes to show that smart interventions can make an enormous difference in a very short time.

Those hoping for a miracle need only stop by their local magic shop and look somewhere between the magic coins and the trick-card deck.

The Ghanaian "prophet" Obiri Yeboah, head of a Pentecostal church in Uganda, was caught red-handed by Ugandan police with a magic device he had used to dupe his congregation into believing they were experiencing miracles.

It turns out that "The Electric Touch" is not a miracle at all, but is actually intended for budding magicians, who can use it to administer small electric shocks to their unsuspecting volunteers. (Check out a video of the device in action here.)

In a country where the average income is $280, Yeboah is said to have collected large sums of money from devout followers who had faith in these miracle performances. His church is part of the growing "miracle church" phenomenon in the turbulent east African country, where some preachers dangerously claim that they can cure HIV/AIDS through special healing powers. 

The president of Gambia can cure AIDS, but just on Thursdays, the only day when his healing powers work. The cure includes applying a green sludge to the skin of the patient, sprinkling a mystery liquid, having the patient swig a brown broth, and topping it all off with a banana snack. Whirling about the patient and uttering verses from the Koran are also part of the treatment.

President Yahya Jammeh says this treatment, with its seven secret herbs, can cure AIDS "with absolute certainty" if patients meet two requirements: 1) abstaining from alcohol, tea, coffee, sex, and theft during the multiweek course of treatment, and 2) ceasing to take antiviral medications.

Oh, the president also claims he can cure asthma and diabetes.

Speaking seriously, though, this "cure" for AIDS highlights the misinformation that surrounds the disease in many countries. In Africa, many aren't aware that condoms protect against HIV infection. Even if they are told, they also face anti-condom messages: Condoms are a conspiracy by whites to lower African birthrates; condoms are tainted with HIV to decrease the African population. On top of it all, traditional healers, tribal leaders, and the Catholic Church warn against using condoms. What is one to believe?

GEORGES GOBET/AFP

Democracy has proven tough enough for many African nations—poor, riddled with corruption, and bereft of functioning institutions as they are—to achieve. Now we can add one more inhibiting factor to the list: HIV/AIDS. Not only does AIDS leave voter rolls bloated with the names of people who have died, a recent study of six southern African countries found, but the disease robs political parties of their most able campaigners and deprives constituencies of their MPs. A BBC article summarizing the study reports:

In Zambia for example, in the first 20 years from 1964 to 1984 only 6% of by-elections were held as a result of death. But in the next 10 years, 60% of by-elections were because MPs had died. In Malawi, the speaker admitted that 28 deaths of MPs were Aids related.

The study, which was conducted by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa, points out that these vacancies sometimes stay open for a year, leaving parts of the population without a voice in government. And the unanticipated economic burden of special by-elections can be just as damaging—one by-election costs Zambia more than US$200,000—since the resources need to be reallocated from other parts of the national budget. Moreover, it's hard to mobilize apathetic voters during by-elections, so smaller parties with fewer resources end up losing out to the ruling party.

Most disturbingly, though, the study finds that the stigma attached to AIDS makes it extraordinarily difficult to get good data from political elites. How can you fix a problem if you can't measure it? Reporting these figures and calculating these costs is a vital first step towards greater openness and public disclosure about the disease. If African democracy is to avoid becoming the next victim of the AIDS pandemic, the conspiracy of silence among the continent's leaders will have to end.

TORSTEN BLACKWOOD/AFP

Papua New Guinea, a small group of islands east of Indonesia, is home to some of the most isolated communities on the planet. Its dense jungles and impassable mountains, however, have not been able to shield its people from one of the outside world's worst scourges: HIV. The World Health Organization estimates that as many as 1 million people, more than one-fifth of all Papua New Guineans, may be infected with the AIDS virus by 2015.

The epidemic is already exacerbating the inevitable clashes between traditional and modern in the tiny country. AIDS deaths are often attributed to witchcraft and  followed by brutal retribution against those deemed responsible (usually women). The government is trying to devise a comprehensive approach to the disease, but it will have to contend with deep-grained beliefs, like this matter-of-fact justification by a farmer who killed his neighbors:

We ran after them and we chopped their heads off with an axe and a bush knife. I felt sorry for them but they were witches, they deserved to die. If they were still alive they could hurt people with their magic.