<div>The impact of HIV infection on some populations in Africa has been devastating, so the concept of using HIV as a "weapon" against certain societies that are vulnerable to high rates of infection, without modern medical treatment, is in theory not so far fetched. I am not suggesting that the spread of HIV in Africa was a deliberate plot to destabilize communities and governments, to make them more open to exploitation, or to deliberately lower population among the vulnerable and poor. But HIV has had an impact greater, for some years, than the killing in Africa from war, according to the website below:</div>
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<div><a href="http://www.globalissues.org/article/90/aids-in-africa">http://www.globalissues.org/article/90/aids-in-africa</a></div>
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<p class="ie6-first-line">Between 1999 and 2000 more people died of AIDS in Africa than in all the wars on the continent, as mentioned by the UN Secretary General, <a title="External Link: Victoria Brittain, 'More die of Aids than war in Africa says Kofi Annan', The Guardian, March 14, 2000" href="http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,230425,00.html">Kofi Annan</a>.</p>
<p>The death toll is expected to have a severe impact on many economies in the region. In some nations, it is already being felt. Life expectancies in some nations is already decreasing rapidly, while mortality rates are increasing.</p>
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<div class="blockquote-with-source">
<blockquote><ins datetime="February 17, 2008"><a title="Global Issues: “AIDS around the world”, Last updated: Sunday, February 17, 2008" href="http://www.globalissues.org/article/219/aids-around-the-world"><cite><abbr title="Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS">UNAIDS</abbr></cite> estimates</a> for 2007 that there were roughly:</ins></blockquote>
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<ul>
<li>32.8 million living with HIV
<li>2.5 million new infections of HIV
<li>2 million deaths from AIDS</li></li></li></ul></div>
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<div>What is amazing is how many people believe conspiracy theories, or who simply do not have correct medical information, about HIV and AIDS. The following website explores some of these conspiracy theories, and incorrect medical beliefs, their flaws and negative effects. The article also mentions the HIV as bioweapon created by the US theory spread by the Soviet block in the later 1980s. I recall with amazement listening to Radio Moscow (from Russia on short wave) in the later 1980s discuss HIV/AIDS as a US created bioweapon:</div>
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<div><a href="http://www.thetalkingdrum.com/aids.html">http://www.thetalkingdrum.com/aids.html</a></div>
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<div>From website above:</div>
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<div>An early version of the AIDS-as-biowarfare theory was based on the work of two East German scientists, Jakob and Lilli Segal, published by the Soviet news agency Tass on March 30, 1987. The Segals claimed that HIV could not have evolved naturally, being in fact an artificial splice between visna virus (a retrovirus that infects the nervous system of sheep) and HTLV-1 (the first retrovirus known to infect humans). This splice, they asserted, was created at the notorious CBW lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and then tested on prisoners in the area. </div>
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<div><a href="http://www.thetalkingdrum.com/aids.html">http://www.thetalkingdrum.com/aids.html</a></div>
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<div>More from this website:</div>
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<div>There is only one problem with this almost perfect fit: It is not true. The theories on how HIV the virus that causes AIDS was purposely spliced together in a lab wilt under scientific scrutiny. Moreover, these conspiracy theories divert energy from the work that must be done in the trenches if marginalized communities are to survive this epidemic: grassroots education, mobilizations for AIDS prevention, and better care for people living with HIV. They distract from the urgent need to focus a spotlight on the life-and-death issue of AIDS prevention and on the crucial struggle against a racist and profit driven public health system that is responsible for tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. After more than nine years doing AIDS education in prison, I have found these conspiracy myths to be the main internal obstacle in terms of prisoners' consciousness to implementing risk reduction strategies. A recent study at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, confirmed that African Americans who believe in the conspiracy theories are significantly less likely to use condoms or to be tested for HIV. Put bluntly: The false conspiracy theories are themselves a contributing factor to the terrible toll of unnecessary AIDS deaths. What's the use, believers ask, of making all the hard choices to avoid spreading or contracting the disease if the government is going to find a way to infect people anyway? And what's the point of all the hassles of safer sex, or all the inconvenience of not sharing needles if HIV can be spread, as many conspiracy theorists claim, by casual contact such as sneezing or handling dishes? The core of the mind-set that undermines prevention efforts is "denial." People whose activities have put them at risk of HIV are often petrified and turn to conspiracy theories as a hip and seemingly militant rationale for not confronting their own dangerous practices. At the same time, such theories provide an apparently simple and satisfying alternative to the complex challenge of dealing with the myriad of social, behavioral, and medical factors that propel the epidemic. While convinced that humans did not design HIV, my main concern here is not to disprove the conspiracy theories. Neither do I attempt to solve the problem of the origins of AIDS or even review the many different theories and approaches to that question. The origin of this disease, as of many others, is likely to remain unsolved for years to come. Rather, the article examines the validity of one set of theories being widely propagated to prisoners and to African American communities: that HIV was deliberately spliced together in a lab as a weapon of genocide. What follows is a look at the major flaws in, and political agenda of, the major conspiracy theories. Readers uninterested in this detailed critique may skip to the section beginning with "The Real Genocide," which discusses the system that made these theories so plausible and that abets as part of its routine functioning the spread of AIDS to "undesirable" communities.</div>
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<div>Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett</div>