Blogging ideas for December 2008

Before Facebook, I carried a blog notebook in my purse, and would jot ideas down to research and comment on. At the end of the year, I'd evaluate what I DID NOT write about. December 2008: Here's several for that year:

"Abstinence is 100% successful in controlling the spread of AIDS and in reducing poverty, but it's a political wasteland with the pro-abortion crowd. There's no money in abstinence." 

"There are 39,000+ runners in the NYC marathon--26 in the 80-90 year old division. In my dreams!!!" 

"Theresa Hogan has an op-ed saying don't make this a single issue election--abortion. Why not? I might not word it that way but we do need a leader with character, not one who gets a 100% rating from NARAL."

"In NY the UN Secretary [Ban Ki-moon--Korea] looks up from his latte and polished desk and says he's "concerned" that women and children are being raped; homes burned and sons murdered. Someone buy this puppet a ticket to the Congo."

"In Jos Nigeria clashes of ethnic violence have killed over 400 and displaced over 7,000--mainly Christians by Muslims. I'm not going to say it was buried in the back pages of the paper because the victims were Christians, but I will say it was because they were Africans. But when you've killed millions by taking DDT away from them, what's a few more? Where are the happy-clappy, sappy-crappy one-globe folks when you need them?"

"Recipe for Buckeye Pie"

My interests and opinions haven't changed much in 17 years--politics, people and pie.

Note: I had to look up a Congo war in 2008, because the almost continuous wars in Congo had killed about 6 million since the late 90s. It was 2008 Nord-Kivu campaign. Killing thousands of Africans doesn't get a lot of press in U.S. media because they can't find a white policeman to blame it on.

Time for Democrats to panic

Democrats are clearly panicking. There has never been a better time to be black in America, and if word gets out, they might lose their victim voter base. So we need new riots and protests.

In the last 2.5 decades crime has dropped drastically, so it's time to gin that up by complaining about the number of black men in prison (which is why the neighborhood is safer). Blacks are now over represented in many city governments and community protection agencies, so it's time to blame the white controlled system, micro aggression, etc. The college enrollment rate is higher for black high school graduates than whites, so it's time to berate the education system. More whites are killed in officer involved shootings at a higher rate than blacks, so it's time to get on social media and tell lies. With at least 5 government health insurance systems, no black need be without health care--so it's time to blame the GOP for not making even more money available. 126 wealth transfer programs for the poor, most of which recipients are white--but don't advertise that--Democrats don't want the world to know that millions of whites don't have that mystical "privilege" they tout.

Now the bad news is out there, too--AIDS among young black gay men is the highest for any group--gay and bisexual men represent approximately 2% of the US population, but account for three-fourths of all estimated new HIV infections and blacks account for most of those. Abortion of black babies is at an all time high--genocide rates--78 percent of the abortions in New York City were for black or Hispanic babies. Where are the marches and outrage? Black men are not marrying the mothers of their children leaving many kids to grow up without a male parent. Until the 1960s, blacks were more likely to be married than whites, and then came the "war on poverty" and Uncle Sam as a step-father. But, the Democrats can ignore every academic and religious study that says family is important to economic, social and political well being and just ask for more money.

Who really cares? Bush or Obama?

As many faults as Bush brought to the table, Obama is making him look like a hero and statesman, which I doubt that he was. However, Bush was definitely a patriot, a committed Christian, and a man who loved his country. Obama is none of those.

In lives saved, Bush has no match in my life time. The embryonic stem cell executive order (it was never outlawed, it only limited government funding to cells lines already in use) allowed technology to catch up and save women’s bodies from becoming medical labs for experimentation, his moral leadership on abortion inspired thousands of local organizations and volunteers which are reducing that killing field, his trafficking in persons effort (there are more slaves today than during the 17-18th centuries of the Atlantic slave trade) and the PEPFAR AIDS drug assistance in Africa (Obama has let this slide since it wasn’t his idea), and freeing the women under control of the Taliban all put Obama, the peace prize prez, to shame.

AIDS affects gay men and and blacks more than any other demographic, but it was Bush, not Obama, who really stepped up to help. Just one more example of how people who blindly supported Obama where left out in the cold after he got their vote. Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, said HIV/AIDS was a higher priority for Bush than it is for Obama, citing the ADAP waiting list and the distinction in PEPFAR as a key difference between the presidents.

http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/aa/index.htm

AIDS memorial--Why?

"A design that calls for a grove of trees reflected infinitely by 12-foot-long mirrors was selected today for New York’s first large-scale AIDS memorial."

The AIDS Memorial Park organization, Architectural Record, and Architizer have announced the winner of a competition to design a memorial for victims of AIDS and an education center in Manhattan’s West Village. Studio a+i of Brooklyn, N.Y. won the blind competition with a plan to surround an existing triangular park with mirrored walls and a grove of white birch trees. Architectural Digest, Jan. 30, 2012

Why do we memorialize this particular disease's victims, a disease which is mostly self-inflicted through promiscuous, indiscriminate sex and multiple partners? We don't memorialize death by smoking, drinking or over-eating, or driving too fast, or not exercising. Where is the memorial to those who have died from malaria because environmentalists pulled DDT from the market? Where is the memorial for 50 million dead American babies?

Men who have sex with men--MSM account for nearly half of the approximately 1.2 million people living with HIV in the United States (49%, or an estimated 580,000 total persons).

MSM account for more than half of all new HIV infections in the United States each year (61%, or an estimated 29,300 infections).

While CDC estimates that only 4 percent of men in the United States are MSM, the rate of new HIV diagnoses among MSM in the United States is more than 44 times that of other men (range: 522 – 989 per 100,000 MSM vs. 12 per 100,000 other men). CDC Fact Sheet

Rectal herpes

I write a lot of medical stuff, although not as much as I used to as I get further and further away from my former job (veterinary medicine library). Today someone visited my site looking for “rectal herpes,” so I checked to see what I’d written, and found a 2006 article about what must be one of the dumbest characters in the anals annals of medicine. Not only did he smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, but was also a user of marijuana and meth AND he was a promiscuous 31 year old gay man.

“He has AIDS, rectal discharge, pain when defecating and blood in his stool, pelvic pain, nausea, and weakness. It's the pain, not the AIDS that has sent him to the doctor this time. He has regular anal intercourse without condoms with his "usual partner" who also is HIV positive, and he has other partners.” NEJM, Jan. 19, 2006 .

He was diagnosed with AIDS as a teen-ager (12 years before) and over the course of his disease has received at various times zidovudine, lamivudine, nelfinavir, ritonavir-lopinavir, cephalexin, clarithromycin ethambutol, didanosine, stavudine, and efavirenz. In addition to AIDS he developed Kaposi's sarcoma, oral thrush, rectal herpes simplex and anal condylomas because even with all this medical treatment (or because of it) he never gave up his promiscuity. Then he was treated with acyclovir, fluconazole, and dapsone; for the current problem, he got ceftriaxone and azithromycin. Now he had lymphogranuloma venereum proctitis. A series of lab tests showed he didn’t have gonorrhea, herpes simplex, chlamydia and syphilis--all common among gay men--maybe those bacteria couldn‘t survive the chemical soup floating through his body.

I’m sure that under Obamacare, these careless, do-nothings (except for bath houses, male prostitutes and voting) will have full access to the government run pharmacies, and the elderly and poor will have fully managed and minimum care of aspirin and 7-Up.

Abstinence--The Scarlet Letter of the Left

There are few things as political as AIDS and poverty. And sexual abstinence pretty much wipes out both, but since you can't tax it, and it has a religious and moral connotation, it is maligned as impractical at best and unconscionable at worst. Take PEPFAR reauthorization. That's the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, and the original 2003 act was reauthorized on July 30, 2008. In just 5 years, the treatment with life saving medicine went from 50,000 to 1.73 million, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa. This was applauded even by its critics. However, the most successful focus country in prevention was Uganda, which waged a strong abstinence (Africa style) program. And yes, now the "don't condemn the condom" troops are on full attack against the "zero grazing campaign" of Uganda, which is probably why the 2008 reauthorization caved on the abstinence funding. The powerful pro-abortion groups need more ways to reduce the populations of blacks, whether in the U.S. or Africa, and our new president will certainly be going along with this. According to the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute

"Uganda’s rejection of the condom-emphasizing approach, also known as the ABC model (Abstinence, Being Faithful, Condoms as a last resort), has earned it the enmity of the orthodox AIDS lobby. AIDS 2008 featured a symposium session chaired by Frances Kissling – the former president of “Catholics for Choice,” who stepped down last year – aimed at discrediting the ABC approach as “ideological.”

Still, the Ugandan model is attracting notice. India’s National Council of Educational Research and Training recently announced that it would embrace the Ugandan emphasis on abstinence and fidelity in its sex education curricula. Significantly, a study authored by a research team headed by Harvard’s Daniel Halperin that appeared in the May 2008 issue of Science magazine, “Reassessing HIV Prevention,” found empirical evidence supporting aspects of the Ugandan approach."

The 2003 requirement that 33% of prevention funds be spent on abstinence-until-marriage programs was removed in the 2008 renewal, reduced to "meaningful support of monogamy and fidelity." Critics consider abstinence and faithfulness programs a distortion of priorities (i.e., Christian moralizing), preferring instead the unreliableness of the occasionally used and leaky condom. Also, groups counseling abortion services may now get funding for HIV services. You will read hundreds of studies and documents saying women and children are at risk from abstinence based programs--but it's rare to see anything that says abstinence is really the only solution.

While western based liberals in both the government and the increasingly politicized medical field have wrung their hands over the "moralizing and constraining spending mandates" of PEPFAR (JAMA, Nov. 5, 2008 p. 2047), Uganda excelled in controlling AIDS by using the common sense approach--the African way. Helen Epstein’s new book, “The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West and the Fight Against Aids" is reviewed and linked at Abstinence Africa which may show just one more way Westerners have misjudged the African culture, particularly polygamy.

"In Africa, HIV spread among ordinary people who were nowhere near as promiscuous as high-risk Western groups such as prostitutes or gay men. By contrast, about 40 percent of Ugandan men and 30 percent of women have ongoing relationships with a small number of people -- perhaps two or three -- at a time. These ‘concurrent’ relationships might overlap for months or years, or even, in the case of polygamous marriages, a lifetime.

As Epstein explains, these concurrent relationships are at higher risk for spreading HIV for two reasons. First, a person recently infected with HIV may be a hundred times more likely to transmit the virus than someone who has been infected for a few months or years. Most Westerners tend to practice “serial monogamy,” having only one partner at a time, and will usually only infect a current partner. By contrast, a polygamous man who becomes infected with HIV is likely to infect all his concurrent partners.

Concurrent relationships are also at higher risk for spreading HIV because the degree of intimacy and trust in these relationships means that people don’t think they need to use condoms. Many faithful African women became infected with HIV because of their husbands’ behavior. Few health officials from international aid organizations were aware of any of this.

Many western AIDS researchers believe that promoting condoms among high risk groups, such as prostitutes and their clients is the best way to slow the spread of HIV. But HIV continued to spread throughout eastern and southern Africa, even when condom use soared. Epstein argues that some of the condom campaigns backfired. “By associating AIDS with beer drinking, premarital sex, prostitution … womanizing and rape, the lusty condom ads ... clashed disastrously with local sensibility concerning decency and self-respect,” Epstein writes. One of her African sources stated bluntly: “The campaigns were totally wrong. The message was you had to be a prostitute or truck driver to get AIDS.”

A Ugandan prevention campaign focused specifically on issues of concurrent relationships. They developed the slogans “Love Carefully” and “Zero Grazing” – meaning, in the words of the head of Uganda’s AIDS Control Program, “avoid indiscriminate and free-ranging sexual relations.” These slogans were posted on public buildings, broadcast on radio, and bellowed in speeches by government officials. The Ugandan Association of Co-Wives and Concubines -- hardly something any Western aid organization would have instituted -- contributed as well. These women policed the behavior of polygamous men, encouraging them to avoid the casual affairs that could endanger all their wives and future children. One of their messages was: “If your husband is unfaithful and is going to kill you with AIDS, you divorce him.”

The result of all this was a steep decline in the number of sexual partners, a basic step in controlling any sexually transmitted disease."

Of course, AIDS gets the focus and money, but that's not what kills most vulnerable African children--it's diarrheal diseases and malaria. In their concern over bird eggs launched by the non-scientist Rachel Carson over 30 years ago, western governments and companies were quickly pressured into removing DDT from the arsenal of weapons in the war against disease before anything else was available (this method continues today in most environmental issues). This killed millions of Africans and disabled millions more. Instead, the missionaries for malaria when viewing the havoc they created, moved to the mosquito condom--the bed net, which probably requires even more care with application than the other type on an eager body part. And of course, installing wells to pump clean water means someone has to take of them. Where's the money in that?

Yes, there's just not much money in clean water, dead mosquitoes and women taking control to guard their own and their children's health through chastity and faithfulness.

And on money, both the left and the right can agree.

Taken any tests lately?

Like HIV? Me either. At least, not that I know of. But apparently, according to CDC Guidelines health-care providers (i.e. doctors) should routinely screen all patients aged 13-64 years for HIV. I'm not sure about those of Medicare age--maybe we're too old to count and they like to bump us off the rolls, or we're staying out of bath houses and not shooting up. Here are the risk factors for HIV:

A man having sex with another man even just one time.

Taking street drugs by needle even one time.

Trading sex for money or drugs even one time.

Sex, even one time, with someone who would answer yes to any of the above.

You have hemophilia and have received clotting factor concentrations.

According to a report in JAMA (CDC/MMWR) Nov 5, 77% of persons with HIV risk factors were not tested in the preceding 12 months, and the recommendation for them is an annual test. However, 40% of the general population has been tested. 60.7% of pregnant women were tested for HIV in 2006 (lower than other infectious disease). In 2006, non-Hispanic blacks accounted for 49% of all reported cases of HIV/AIDS, and the HIV prevalence among non-Hispanic blacks was 2.1% compared with 0.4% in the over all U.S. population. (I'd cite the sources, but they aren't printed with the article which is really dumb.) Depending on how often you go to the doctor for allergies or the flu, you might be tested multiple times, and someone else scoring BINGO on all the risk factors, is never screened. Something's very wrong here. They can't keep track of the MSM who are doing all sorts of disgusting things with body parts, so they decide to test everyone? And they still can't get the gay and bisexual guys to come in for screening by changing the rules? These tests must be awfully cheap.

They don't need to have you sign anything or give you anything in writing either. Here's the rules.

Here's the take from the ACLU.

If you've gotten a 3 page list of "services provided" for the last time you were in the hospital, here's the coding guidelines.

These guidelines from 2006 were part of Bush's Domestic HIV Initiative. (Approximately $18.9 billion (83%) of the FY 2007 HIV/AIDS request was for domestic programs; $3.9 billion (17%) for global programs. Only 4% was for prevention, however. Here) The CDC allocated funds to: 23 jurisdictions in clinical settings; 67 grantees in 25 states through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration; 41 family planning clinics grantees in 34 states through the Office of Population Affairs. And the funds were allocated primarily to test blacks. Of course, testing isn't research or treatment or behavior change--it's just to figure out if they have successful strategies in place to overcome barriers to--testing.

Test product

This is the only article I found on the cost effectiveness of testing the entire population. And obviously, if it's your life, or that of someone you love, you think the cost is worth it.

The non-epidemic of AIDS

Just as people who aren't buying into the "we can control the world" pantheism theme of global warming are sneered at and vilified as deniers, so also were those who denied that AIDS was an epidemic EVERYONE needed to fear. You didn't even need much biology to figure out that it was gay men, bi-sexual men, intravenous drug users and sex workers who had the problem. But no, we were constantly bashed if we believed AIDS is a very specific problem that threatens some people with very specific behaviors. And even then, we knew intuitively that it was the extremely promiscuous gay men who were immune compromised from other venereal diseases who posed the most risk to other gays. The monogamous librarians raising some kids and a garden out back probably weren't the same threat as the swingers hitting the bath houses in San Francisco.

The problem is this; raising funds for a disease is a little gold mine--and once you're on a roll, no one wants to give that up. If cancer disappeared tomorrow, millions would be out of a job and a reason for living. It's incredibly political--think of the Bush-bashing if he doesn't pour enough money into AIDS; or how much love and warm fuzzies former presidents can get by funding a foundation to fight AIDS. In Africa, the money for AIDS is stealing from the general health of the population.

In his paper 'The myth of a general AIDS pandemic', Professor Chin argues that UNAIDS has been very successful in raising unprecedented global financial support for HIV/AIDS programmes, but has achieved this by 'grossly exaggerating the scope and trend' of the pandemic. While Professor Chin stops short of accusing the agency of deliberately lying, his implication is that UNAIDS has depended on inaccurate alarmism to ensure a continued flow of funds to the innumerable NGOs, government programmes and activist groups that constitute the AIDS industry.

While no-one is denying that AIDS remains an extremely serious problem in certain parts of sub-Saharan Africa, UNAIDS' distortions have had serious implications for global health. Because AIDS budgets in many African countries are now often bigger than the entire national health budget, this has led to distortions in the provision of overall primary care, with carers, clinicians and other scarce resources being diverted into AIDS, undermining funding for basic health services.

Story at Medical Progress

Maybe Chin won't call the UNAIDS a bunch of liars, but I will. Don't be manipulated by the disease mongers. Know where your own money and your tax money goes.

How the liberal media treated a Bush daughter

About a year ago, I blogged about first daughter's new book on AIDS. Here's what liberals thought of her effort.

Jenna Bush's book for young people

Jenna Bush has authored a book "Ana's Story; a Journey of Hope" (HarperCollins, 2007, 209 pp. $18.99). It is non-fiction, for teenagers and about AIDS, is based on 6 months of conversations with women and children with HIV or AIDS when the president's daughter was working with UNICEF. It was reviewed, probably reluctantly, by Bob Minzesheimer in USAToday. In general, he was positive, pointing out it was easy to read with 35 pages of sources addressing common myths about AIDS and HIV. The paper edition differed from the online version. In paper he wrote that it doesn't address how much U.S. support should go to organizations that distribute condoms as opposed to religious groups that promote only abstinence. How picky is that? Reviewers and talking heads always want the book they themselves didn't make the effort to write and publish. I wonder if Minzesheimer would board an airplane that had the same failure rate as condoms?

In another column this reviewer points out that when Oprah even mentions a title (Eat, pray, love; Middlesex) it leap frogs to the top of the best seller list. That won't happen to a book by a conservative, even if the topic is one of her favorites.

The commenters at the revised online article are the usual collection of Bush-haters and author-wannabees complaining about favoritism. They are well worth reading for their ignorance, pomposity and narrowmindedness, just in case you'd forgotten how green the left is. If even five young people read this book and decide that HIV is probably something in their future if they don't change their lifestyle, she will have achieved her goal.

Speaking of AIDS and abstinence, The invisible cure: Africa, the West and the fight against AIDS by Helen Epstein (Farrar Straus & Girous, 2007) reports on the Uganda campaign of "zero grazing," "love faithfully," and "sticking to one partner," later known as ABC (Abstain, Be faithful, use Condoms). Uganda's decrease in HIV began in the late 1980s, and its approach became standard policy for the USAID and President Bush's PEPFAR. Uganda experienced an unprecedented decrease in HIV during the 1990s. The US policy experienced howls of protest and outrage because of its religious implications. However, "an increasing number of scientists have concluded that an ABC approach is supported by scientific evidence . . . 1) condom use hasn't been effective in epidemic areas (they are used inconsistantly and create more risk taking) and 2) number of partners and overlapping relationships is the key to increase or decrease in spreading sexual diseases. Epstein says multiple concurrent relationships create the "super highways of hyperepidemics," and casual sex constitutes the "on-ramps." The reviewer (JAMA, August 6, 2008, pp. 587-589) reports that Epstein challenges many sterotypes and myths about Africans.

The low down on the uptick in AIDS

The newest JAMA isn’t available to me yet, but for the typical New York Times hysterical editorializing of health information news, see yesterday’s paper. I read about the "big government cover up" (subtext: it’s all Bush’s fault) story at the coffee shop this morning.

Opening paragraph: “The AIDs epidemic in the U.S. is about 40% worse than the government has reported.”

First of all, there is no epidemic in the U.S. AIDs or HIV affect a tiny percentage of the population--mostly promiscuous, young, risk-taking gay men and IV drug users. Studies as early as 15 years ago in public health journals showed that after all the valiant efforts of the gay community to clean up their behavior or die (and many of them did both), the younger gay men rushed right back to the bath houses and sex without condoms once the drug cocktails became effective in extending their lives, but they also spread the disease and picked up other STDs which lowered their resistance. You don’t find out the role of gay men in this story until about paragraph 15 (53% of new infections are in young gay men, an extremely small demographic).

Second, you find out if you read far enough, more accurate measures account for the increase changing the results and numbers. There’s no government plot folks, move along. The CDC, which did the most recent study and all the previous studies, IS THE GOVERNMENT (think FEMA with a little black bag and clip boards) .

Third, the author of the NYT article attempts to hint at a conspiracy to keep this quiet because 2 peer review journals returned it when it came out in October 2007. That’s not the least bit unusual--I used to be a peer reviewer. Often they are sent back because the statistics or procedures are not clearly explained, they exceed the word limit, the citations are incorrect, or the data false or misleading. The redo improves the piece. That JAMA will report it is also not unusual--its editorial policies are about as liberal as the NYT. It was embargoed so it could be presented at a conference, but someone violated that--all in the public’s best interest, of course (sarcasm alert).

Fourth, in true NYT fashion, President Bush is faulted for the billions spent on AIDS in foreign countries, rather than attacking the epidemic at home. The guy just can't win.

Fifth, here’s the best line in the article. Someone in CDC is quoted as saying “We’re not effectively reaching men who have sex with men and African Americans to lower their risk.” Yeah, like no gay man knows that gay bars and bath houses and downlow (closeted homosexual) with the ladies is risky behavior. And I just know that gay teens and 20-somethings would most certainly stop having sex if CDC just put out enough posters, TV ads and brochures. Just the way the government has successfully controlled smoking and obesity.

Gay black men have disproportionate rates of HIV

A recent article in JAMA (Jan 23, 2008) tries to sort through the puzzling statistics of HIV among gay black men. Try as she might, Ms. Voelker can't link poverty or lack of health care, although she tries. Like most of the other health problems among Americans, it's behavior.

"Studies Illuminate HIV’s Inequalities," Rebecca Voelker, JAMA. 2008;299(3):269-275.

Here's my take away from reading the article:

1) They have unprotected sex with men, as do many gay men, and report less than other groups since 1990--before that it was much higher.
2) They are more likely to have sex with other black men who are also likely to be infected. This could result in co-infections.
3) They have numerous sex partners, although this is common for gay men in general, so is not an unusual trait for their race, and they report fewer than other groups.
4) They "don't disclose their sexual orientation [to researchers]", i.e. they lie about being gay (called down low), or don't consider themselves gay even if having sex with men. I would think this could affect the results of #1 and #3.
5) Because they don't think they are gay, they don't seek antiretroviral treatment, which means they have high levels of the virus in their blood, and if having sex with other black men, are more likely to transmit it.
6) More likely to have other current STDs which lowers their immunity--gonorrhea incidence among HIV-positive men is soaring and there is an ongoing syphilis epidemic among gay men.

The presenter of the statistics, Greg Millett, MPH, a CDC behavioral scientist, will probably get into trouble for pointing out these racial differences. Or, maybe he'll just get more grant money to study the behavior more closely. But for every dollar spent focusing on social problems like race and income, that's one less dollar focusing on the virus.

The only reason to even report on HIV/AIDS is because of the attention it gets from the media, the President (see the outrage over the 2009 budget that he didn't fund it at higher levels), the ex-President and Bill Gates. Only about 5% to 7% of male adults and adolescents in the United States identify themselves as men who have sex with men, but they have 71% of the AIDS/HIV. One of the unintended consequences of improved treatment has been a growing carelessness about protection and casual sex.

Auto accidents are still far and away the big killer of young people and we could save thousands and thousands of lives of our children just by raising the legal driving age to 18. No one has been able to figure out a poverty, gender or race angle for this common sense move, so we'd rather shower research dollars on a behavior we can't control.

4341

The AIDS Estimate

What's the reason for overestimating the effects or spread of a terrible disease? WaPo reports on the inaccuracy of the UN estimates of the size and course of the AIDS epidemic.

The United Nations' top AIDS scientists plan to acknowledge this week that they have long overestimated both the size and the course of the epidemic, which they now believe has been slowing for nearly a decade, according to U.N. documents prepared for the announcement.

AIDS remains a devastating public health crisis in the most heavily affected areas of sub-Saharan Africa. But the far-reaching revisions amount to at least a partial acknowledgment of criticisms long leveled by outside researchers who disputed the U.N. portrayal of an ever-expanding global epidemic. Source Washington Post (may need registration)

It is good that 40% fewer will suffer, unfortunately I doubt that it means that the programs in place have been successful, but rather those who run the programs have been inflating the numbers in order to get more money. The unintended consequences are probably doner fatigue both from NGOs and governments, and less money directed to other programs that need it.

I've written about this before: "Western interference in the economies, politics and cultures of third world developing countries has not turned out well. The American Left loves to point fingers at Christian missionaries who started hospitals, schools, churches and developed a written language for Africans, Asians, and Islanders, but their footprints are tiny compared to the disaster of foreign aid from Europe and the U.S. The missionaries at least were accountable to God and their denomination; the governments and the U.N. agencies who soaked the guilt-swamped for more money funded various interventions in their societies which were accountable to no one, not even us taxpayers, elevating a class of dictators, bureaucrats and home grown thieves."

For all the statistics on what aid has done, check The White Man's Burden; why the West's efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good, by William Easterly (Penguin Press, 2006) and The Trouble with Africa; why foreign aid isn't working, by Robert Calderisi (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). From WaPo's review of Easterly's book: [He writes about] "the spirit of benign meddling that lies behind foreign aid, foreign military interventions and such do-gooder institutions as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United Nations. In his account, such efforts are fatally contaminated by what the philosopher Karl Popper called "utopian social engineering." Easterly's list of well-meaning villains stretches from the economist Jeffrey Sachs to the rock singer and charity impresario Bono."

4149 Jenna Bush's book for young people

Jenna Bush has authored a book "Ana's Story; a Journey of Hope" (HarperCollins, 2007, 209 pp. $18.99). It is non-fiction, for teenagers and about AIDS, is based on 6 months of conversations with women and children with HIV or AIDS when the president's daughter was working with UNICEF. It was reviewed, probably reluctantly, by Bob Minzesheimer in USAToday. In general, he was positive, pointing out it was easy to read with 35 pages of sources addressing common myths about AIDS and HIV. The paper edition differed from the online version. In paper he wrote that it doesn't address how much U.S. support should go to organizations that distribute condoms as opposed to religious groups that promote only abstinence. How picky is that? Reviewers and talking heads always want the book they themselves didn't make the effort to write and publish. I wonder if Minzesheimer would board an airplane that had the same failure rate as condoms?

In another column this reviewer points out that when Oprah even mentions a title (Eat, pray, love; Middlesex) it leap frogs to the top of the best seller list. That won't happen to a book by a conservative, even if the topic is one of her favorites.

The commenters at the revised online article are the usual collection of Bush-haters and author-wannabees complaining about favoritism. They are well worth reading for their ignorance, pomposity and narrowmindedness, just in case you'd forgotten how green the left is. If even five young people read this book and decide that HIV is probably something in their future if they don't change their lifestyle, she will have achieved her goal.