Denying the spread of Aids should be as harshly punished as refuting the Holocaust, says a s h smyth |
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In several European nations, refuting the established facts of the Nazi Holocaust will land you in jail. Witness David Irving, the notorious pseudo-historian whose failure to recognise these laws earned him a spell in an Austrian prison before he was let out on probation last week.
Just as Irving and others have ignored documented facts to spin their dark logic, so a handful of mercenary scientists have ignored the truth to side with African governments intent on ignoring Africa’s own holocaust: the Aids virus.
The minutiae of HIV/Aids are no longer a matter of serious academic debate.
The virus has killed 25 million people already, and another 40 million are infected. And though Aids is obviously a global scourge, the core of the problem is in black Africa. Of those 40 million cases, 63 per cent live in sub-Saharan |
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| South Africa’s health minister advocates vegetables in preference to anti-retrovirals |
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Africa, home to 12 per cent of the population.
In 2006, a very few African nations (Botswana, for example) finally managed to limit the spread of HIV/Aids. Elsewhere, little or nothing has been done. Zimbabwe has a stratospheric level of infection, and ignores it. South Africa's health minister, Mrs Manto Tshabalala-Msimang (left), advocates vegetables in preference to anti-retrovirals, while President Mbeki has infamously denied the link between Aids and HIV.
Many African men proudly reject 'European' condoms (which 'don't fit').
Others rape infants, believing this constitutes a cure. And by pathetically insisting that abstinence is the only solution, churches - especially American ones - actively encourage the spread.
HIV/Aids is not going away. Three million died in 2006; four million were newly infected.
If Holocaust-deniers deserve to be punished, so do Aids-deniers. It is high time African governments outlawed denial of the epidemic, and prosecuted those who perpetuate misinformation about Aids or in any way undermine efforts to tackle it. 
FIRST POSTED DECEMBER 27, 2006
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