Twenty-four thousand AIDS fighters gathered in Toronto this week for the 16 International AIDS Conference, but judging from the news coverage, it was hard to tell whether they were there to eradicate AIDS or to eradicate George W. Bush.
The conference opened with a round of fulsome tribute. Ontario's former socialist leader Stephen Lewis, now U.N. special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, paid fulsome tribute to AIDS crusader Bill Gates, who paid fulsome tribute to AIDS crusader Bill Clinton, who paid fulsome tribute to Stephen Lewis for paying fulsome tribute to Bill Gates.
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When actor Richard Gere became another celebrity speaker, it was too much for some frontline AIDS workers. "This conference has been more of a Hollywood conference for philanthropists and stars than for people who are living with AIDS," said Sipho Mthathi, head of a South African treatment group, in an impromptu address.
There was no sign of dissent, however, from the castigation heaped on President Bush's five-year $15-billion "Pepfar" program (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), which advocates an "ABC" battle against AIDS – Abstinence from sex outside marriage, first; be faithful to your spouse, second; use Condoms, third – with the requirement that at least 33 percent of the spending be used to advocate abstinence.
Abstinence and marital fidelity were roundly denounced as American "ideology." Thundered Lewis: "No government in the Western world has the right to dictate policy to African governments around the way in which they structure their response to this pandemic."
"Abstinence is not often an option for poor women and girls who have no choice but to marry at an early age," declared Gates. When he commended the success of Uganda in defeating AIDS chiefly through an abstinence campaign, he was greeted with boos and hisses. The Uganda success was thereafter carefully ignored.
Gates' wife, Melinda, blamed those who declare the use of condoms "immoral or ineffective or both" – i.e., the Bush government and the Christian churches – for "creating a serious obstacle for ending AIDS."
Clinton went further, condemning the Bush government for backing "abstinence," which, he said, doesn't work, and calling for the mass circumcision of African males, which might.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's "failure" to show up was loudly razzed. Not that he had ever said he would. Apparently, he had concluded that standing in front of 24,000 people to be hissed, jeered and booed would not be politically advantageous for himself and do nothing whatever for the victims of AIDS.
Meanwhile, a few dissenting voices appeared in the Toronto media. Columnist Margaret Wente in the liberal Globe Mail called it "the big AIDS circus," chiding its ceaseless politicking: "If I have to hear Saint Stephen Lewis hectoring us with his apocalyptic rhetoric one more time, I think I'll choke."
Michael Fumento of the Hudson Institute, writing in the National Post, spelled out some home truths, such as: First: AIDS peaked in Canada 13 years ago; only 272 cases were diagnosed last year. By contrast, 137,000 Canadians were diagnosed with cancer, about 19,000 with breast cancer. Second: 38 percent of the new cases in Canada were homosexual males; drug users 17 percent; the homosexual proportion is rising. Third: As for "apocalyptic rhetoric," back in the late '80s, one Uganda official predicted his nation "will be a desert" in two years; its population has in fact doubled. In 1998, the U.N. reported 12 percent of Rwandans 15-49 infected, while another agency said 30 percent; it turned out to be 3 percent. Fourth: The present AIDS budget "swamps" spending on malaria and tuberculosis in Africa, which kill twice as many people.
The Catholic Church is deplored by the "AIDS community," wrote columnist Father Raymond J. de Souza, largely because it opposes condoms. He could not see, however, how "those who reject the church's teaching on chastity and moral fidelity blanche from using condoms because of Catholic teaching." Twenty-five percent of the institutions worldwide that treat people for AIDS, he added, are Catholic.
Thus, in terms of its public profile, the conference was far more political than medical. One effect of this was to make victims of the disease implicit partisans in a political controversy that has nothing to do with disease control and a great deal to do with religion. If you really want to help these poor people, you must be a Democrat in the U.S. or a Liberal in Canada, and regard abstaining from sex outside marriage and being loyal to a spouse as an absurdity. Such was the message. How this would "help" the victims was not altogether clear.
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