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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E who wrote (116551)	10/11/2003 5:12:59 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Respond to of 281500

<he'd (Mbeki) never personally known anyone who'd died of AIDS.> The capacity for denial, in some people, is infinite. What's happening here, is a policy driven by two incompatible ideologies: Western Protestant/Catholic puritanism, vs. African traditional culture of sexual permissiveness. The combination creates a dysfunctional policy. Western Puritans (including the Pope), abhor birth control, including condoms and abortions. This policy can produce a low HIV rate in a population, but only if it is coupled with enforcement of the "sex only within marriage" ethic. This works well in Iran and Utah, less well in California and Italy, and not at all in Haiti and South Africa. The claim that condoms don't decrease the risk of infection, reminds me of the Taliban spreading rumors that U.S. food airdrops were poisoned. Both sides make maximalist "faith-based" claims: the Puritan Pope say condoms never work; the Libertines say condoms always work (a claim that is almost true under laboratory conditions, but far from true under real-world conditions). Non-Muslim African nations are totally unwilling to even consider trying to promote "sex only within marriage". They probably couldn't, even if they wanted to. It requires profound cultural changes. There is so much resistance to the required changes, even the impending death of up to 30% of the population, is not a sufficient incentive to get these regimes to make even token efforts. They want Western money, but are unwilling to make any behavior changes. If Western aid money is tied to making those behavior changes, then the funding gets denied. So Africa gets no condoms, no drugs, and no monogamy. And the epidemic spreads.