24 October 2009

Does HIV mean certain death?

So asks an article in this week’s Spectator reviewing the award-winning film House of Numbers, directed by Brent Leung. Its answer, which is neither straightforward nor without controversy, is ‘probably not’, and challenges those entrenched members of the ‘HIV/AIDS industry’: even Professor Luc Montagnier, a winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for co-discovering what would become known as HIV, is quoted in both the review and the film. For a snippet click on the above YouTube extract.

Maybe it’s time we looked behind the avalanche of statistics used to embed vested interests (including a perpetuation of the view held, amongst others by some ‘charities’ with apparently imperious HIV-negative Chief Executives, that those living with HIV are ‘victims’ to be pitied) and consider, for example:
‘When it comes to [HIV/]Aids, people also think in terms of statistics. The film takes its title from James Chin, from head of the World Health Organisation’s global HIV statistical unit, who has been arguing for years that the United Nations figures have been inflated. Two years ago the UN quietly admitted that this was indeed the case: [HIV/]Aids infections had peaked globally in 1998 and deaths peaked in 2005. At the time, Chin’s verdict was that “It’s getting closer to what it ought to be, but it’s still high. It seemed to me that this high rise house of numbers had to crumble.” He estimates the total number of [HIV/]Aids cases is between 20 and 30 million – while the advocacy agency UNAIDS has claimed 42 million.’

Interesting and challenging – go see the film if you can, never take the status quo as a fait accompli. PlusMan doesn't buy the film’s argument hook, line and sinker - but it certainly offers an interesting polemic to the ‘HIV Establishment’ view.

Labels: HIV, infection rates

posted by PlusMan at 22:04

Body Positive North West - the uncharitable HIV charity

This blog is dedicated to re-establishing the Manchester-based HIV charity, Body Positive North West Ltd, to its once pre-eminent position helping those in the NW of England. If you have information to contribute please comment - particularly on wrong doing by the CEO and senior officers. (Charity creates a multitude of sins. Oscar Wilde 1854-1900)