Brad DeLong <delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU> writes
>Who ever said that the threat of AIDS was "uniform"?
But Daniel Davies <d_squared_2002 at yahoo.co.uk> writes
>The epidemiology of AIDS in Africa (the only region in
>which it reached epidemic status) suggested, at the
>time, that the threat was in fact reasonably uniform.
Which only begs the question what the difference is between the spread of AIDS in Africa and Europe and America. French scientists put this down to an African predilection for perverse sexual practices, which says more about them. Some have pointed out to the fact that considerable pressure was put upon African governments and health services to push their estimates of deaths from AIDS upwards. Currently, western funding for health care rewards the upward pressure on AIDS diagnoses. As is well reported, diagnosis in many parts of Africa is not based upon testing for the HIV virus, but on symptoms alone - and the suppression of the immune system is one of many effects of malnutrition.
-- James Heartfield