Let us just note at this point that "reducing multiple and concurrent partnerships" is EXACTLY AND PRECISELY what Uganda did.

It's not sort of or kind of what Uganda did.

It's EXACTLY what Uganda it.

Using home-grown posters like this one:

That's what Dr Green described in his various papers and books.

And for describing it, and for producing the data which demonstrated the decreases in HIV prevalence as a result, he was excoriated by the AIDS establishment.

I know.

I was there.

I participated in debates on, for example, the prestigious Anthropology and AIDS Research Group list serve in which Dr Green was repeatedly and bitterly attacked.

Chuck Tarver was there too -- by the way.

Now we're being told that "reducing multiple and concurrent partnerships" is sound public policy.

Hard cheese for all those who got infected when "reducing multiple and concurrent partnerships" was a religious right plot and not worthy of consideration by AIDS Inc.

Whaddya think guys?

Do you think that Frot will ever be recognized as sound policy too?

The Dutch know -- or knew -- it is.

I'm not holding my breath however.

The Post:

But for many Batswana, as citizens of this landlocked desert country of 1.6 million call themselves, it is a strategy that has rarely been taught.

"There has never been equal emphasis on 'Don't have many partners,' " said Serara Selelo-Mogwe, a public health expert and retired nursing professor at the University of Botswana, who recalled stepping past broken bottles and used condoms as she arrived on campus each Monday morning. "If you just say, 'Use the condom' . . . we will never see the daylight of the virus leaving us."

Yet "Use the condom" has been the chief and indeed only intervention in Southern Africa for DECADES.

And it has failed.

The fact is that in Uganda, by intervening at the "B" level -- BE FAITHFUL TO ONE PARTNER -- the government and more to the point the PEOPLE of Uganda disrupted the networks of multiple, concurrent partners and reduced HIV prevalence for 12 consecutive years.

That's an intervention which works;

and, just like non-anal alternatives for MSM, we know it works and it's been around for a LONG TIME.

Yet AIDS Inc has resolutely REFUSED to use it.

Instead it's been all condoms all the time.

Here's the reality:

CONDOMS CONDOMS CONDOMS = AIDS AIDS AIDS

The Post:

International experts long regarded Botswana as a case study in how to combat AIDS. It had few of the intractable social problems thought to predispose a country to the disease, such as conflict, abject poverty and poor medical care. And for the past decade, the country has rigorously followed strategies that Western experts said would slow AIDS.

So: Botswana lacks the abject poverty which we're so often told causes AIDS.

It has reasonable medical care.

And it "has rigorously followed strategies that Western experts said would slow AIDS."

CONDOMS.

Yet it has one of the highest AIDS rates in the world.

With its diamond wealth and the largess of international donors, Botswana aggressively promoted condom use while building Africa's best network of HIV testing centers and its most extensive system for distributing the antiretroviral drugs that dramatically prolong and improve the lives of those with AIDS.

But even though the relentless pace of funerals began to ease in recent years, the disease was far from under control. The national death rate fell from the highest in the world, but only to second-highest, behind AIDS-ravaged Swaziland. Men and women in Botswana continued to contract HIV faster than almost anywhere else on Earth.

The only place on earth where people are contracting HIV faster is among gay men in the West.

Look:

Twenty-five percent of Batswana adults carry the virus, according to a 2004 national study, and among women in their early 30s living in Francistown, the rate is 69 percent.

Twenty-five percent of American gay men carry HIV.

And if you look at subsets of the gay male population, the rate is much higher.

What happens, as we've seen, is that "age cohorts" -- for example, guys 30 to 39 -- tend to get "saturated" with the virus.

Till prevalence is somewhere in the high 60s.

Dr Chin in The AIDS Pandemic: "HIV prevalence [in one MSM cohort] rose from 1 percent in 1980 to 25 percent in 1982 to 65 percent in 1984."

And then incidence -- the rate of new infections -- increases among the next cohort -- say, guys 20 to 29.

Over and over again.

Researchers increasingly attribute the resilience of HIV in Botswana -- and in southern Africa generally -- to the high incidence of multiple sexual relationships. Europeans and Americans often have more partners over their lives, studies show, but sub-Saharan Africans average more at the same time.

Which is what gay men do.

Multiple concurrent partners.

Dr Chin -- this is from his 2002 poster presentation in Taipei:

Epidemic HIV transmission can occur in large sex networks where there is a pattern of multiple and concurrent sex partners because such large networks usually result in a high prevalence of factors that can greatly facilitate sexual HIV transmission.

As HIV prevalence within these large sex networks increase, the reproductive number (Ro) of HIV also increases.

Gradients of Sexual HIV Risk Behaviors

MSM

Highest -- "Bathhouse" type setting where large numbers of MSM have up to 10-20 sex contacts in a single day or night

Moderate -- Sex with multiple partners on a concurrent basis

Low -- Sex with multiple partners on a serial basis

The Post:

Nearly one in three sexually active men in Botswana reported having multiple, concurrent sex partners, as did 14 percent of women, in a 2003 survey paid for by the U.S. government. Among men younger than 25, the rate was 44 percent.

The distinction between having several partners in a year and several in a month is crucial because those newly infected with HIV experience an initial surge in viral loads that makes them far more contagious than they will be for years. During the three-week spike -- which ends before standard tests can even detect HIV -- the virus explodes through networks of unprotected sex.

Right -- as a study out of MONTREAL just demonstrated, it's the newly infected who spread at least one-half of NEW HIV infections.

That's ONE in TWO.

Newly-infected.

People who are newly infected often don't know they're infected and are highly contagious.

Which means that a guy can tell you with the best will in the world that he's negative -- and he isn't.

That's why the courts in California have held that if YOUR BEHAVIOR gives you reason to believe that you MIGHT be positive -- you have to disclose.

It's not enough to say -- I was negative on my last test.

The only thing which counts is what you are TODAY.

The Post:

This insight explained what studies were documenting: Africans with multiple, concurrent sex partners were more likely to contract HIV, and countries where such partnerships were common had wider and more lethal epidemics.

A model of multiple sexual relationships presented at a Princeton University conference in May showed that a small increase in the average number of concurrent sexual partners -- from 1.68 to 1.86 -- had profound effects, connecting sexual networks into a single, massive tangle that, when plotted out, resembles the transportation system of a major city.

Again, that's what happens among gay men.

Look at this -- from my post The Metrics of Analism -- these are profiles on a big gay internet hook-up site:

seltenheitswert

Position Top & Bottom

Users who know seltenheitswert personally

» A total of 46 users have saved him and marked him as known personally. These users themselves are stored by 1575 other users as known personally. So we can say that the user is really genuine.

---

SkinBottom

No position given

Users who know SkinBottom personally

» A total of 67 users have saved him and marked him as known personally. These users themselves are stored by 2754 other users as known personally. So we can say that the user is really genuine.

Twenty extra "users" translates, in terms of the network, into almost 1200 more contacts.

That's a lot.

Back to the Post article:

A second key factor helping the virus spread through southern Africa is low rates of circumcision. Before European colonialists arrived, most tribes in the region removed the foreskins of teenage boys during manhood rituals. Those rites, which were discouraged by missionaries and other Westerners who regarded them as primitive, have gradually declined as the region rapidly modernized.

That's just great isn't it?

First the colonialists arrive to rip off the resources -- including the physical labor of the people.

Then the missionaries arrive and destroy the people both spiritually and physically:

"Before European colonialists arrived, most tribes in the region removed the foreskins of teenage boys during manhood rituals."

MANHOOD rituals.

The missionaries didn't like them.

They said they were "primitive."

I'll let you in on a little secret about that -- speaking as a Jew.

It wasn't that they were "primitive."

It's that they were associated in the European mind with Judaism and the Jewish people, whom Europeans of that era -- and many today -- abhorred.

Not to mention that these rituals helped boys to become MEN.

So: they got rid of the MANHOOD rituals.

Which were uncomfortably Mosaic and Hebraic and Masculinist.

And ended up killing millions of people.

Does anyone besides me out there get it?

Do ya?

Please do let me know if you do.

These factors, researchers say, explain how North Africa, where Muslim societies require circumcision and strongly discourage sex outside monogamous and polygamous marriages, has largely avoided AIDS. They also explain why the epidemic is far more severe south of the Sahara, where webs of multiple sex partners are more common, researchers say.

West Africa has been partially protected by its high rates of circumcision, but in southern and eastern Africa -- which have both low rates of circumcision and high rates of multiple sex partners -- the AIDS epidemic became the most deadly in the world.

"That's the lethal cocktail," said Harvard University epidemiologist Daniel Halperin, a former AIDS prevention adviser in Africa for the U.S. government, speaking from suburban Boston. "There's no place in the world where you have very high HIV and you don't have those two factors."

Except among Western gay men.

There, the presence or absence of MC is moot, because of the astronomical rates of ANAL.

As infectious disease expert Dr. Myron Cohen said, ANAL changes the equation.

Dr Cohen:

the efficiency of rectal intercourse changes everything because of the number of dendrite cells, receptors and trauma. So you can never overwhelm, you can't win against anal intercourse. ...

Anal intercourse is a really bad sexual practice for HIV transmission. It changes the equation. The efficiency is probably one in ten or one in eight.

So: among *presumably* hetero Africans, promiscuity + lack of MC = AIDS.

Among gay westerners, promiscuity + ANAL = AIDS.

It's the ANAL.

"You can't win against anal."

The Post:

On a hospital wall here, not far from the AIDS clinic that Khumalo visited with his friend, the painted image of a condom shimmers like a comic-book superhero. Giant, colorful block letters declare, "CONDOMISE AND STAY ALIVE!!"

In cramped black script below, it adds, "Abstain first."

Yet rarely seen among Botswana's AIDS prevention messages is one that has worked in other African countries: Multiple sex partners kill. Dubbed "Zero Grazing" by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, this approach dominated in East Africa, where several countries curbed HIV rates.

"curbed"

Uganda RADICALLY REDUCED HIV PREVALENCE.

That's what happened.

The intervention has been proven beyond any doubt.

Fidelity campaigns never caught on in Botswana. Instead, the country focused on remedies favored by Western AIDS experts schooled in the epidemics of America's gay community or Thailand's brothels, where condom use became so routine it slowed the spread of HIV.

But condom use did NOT slow the spread of HIV in America's gay community.

As Dr. Chin explains, that's a piece of conventional wisdom which is utterly false.

It was invented in the late 80s for political reasons -- to make it appear that the gay male community was responding "responsibly" to HIV.

Actually, what was happening was that the death rate was so high that HIV prevalence was coming down -- slightly.

As soon as HAART appeared and men stopped dying, the truth became clear.

HIV prevalence rose.

Condoms were irrelevant -- as they've always been.

These experts brought not just ideas but money, and soon billboards in Botswana touted condoms. Schoolchildren sang about them. Cadres of young women demonstrated how to roll them on. The anti-AIDS partnership between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and drugmaker Merck budgeted $13.5 million for condom promotion -- 25 times the amount dedicated to curbing dangerous sexual behavior.

Condoms condoms condoms -- being promoted by BIG PHARMA and BIG BILL and MELINDA GATES with BIG BUCKS.

Yet Dr Green's findings were and ARE out there.

Everyone knew and KNOWS about them.

There's no secret or hidden information.

But soaring rates of condom use have not brought down high HIV rates. Instead, they rose together, until both were among the highest in Africa.

Isn't that strange?

If condoms work, and the rates of condom use soared, why did HIV infection rates remain so high???

Here's a hint: incorrect use + inconsistent use + disinhibition + breakage and slippage = HIV INFECTION

The focus on condoms endured even after the arrival of internationally heralded "ABC" programs, named for their prescription of "Abstain, Be Faithful and Condomize." The middle concept -- fidelity -- often got lost.

The few posters advocating it in Francistown are old and torn; ads for condoms and abstinence are far more prominent.

A 2004 government study measured the result: Three-quarters of Batswana surveyed knew that condoms could stop the spread of HIV. Half knew that abstinence would. Yet only one in five knew that fidelity to a single, uninfected partner prevented spreading the disease.

Why aren't there more posters up about Fidelity?

Is that a religious right plot?

Well, it's true that the religious right favors abstinence -- it's an easier concept for them.

Because they don't like sex in any form.

So we can all agree that the religious right is a problem.

But they're not the only players, are they?

I mean, surely BILL and MELINDA can understand FIDELITY.

So why aren't they putting some MONEY behind it?

The answer is that --

What's going on here has NOTHING to do with stopping HIV.

It's about protecting and advancing WESTERN notions of SEXUAL FREEDOM -- and Western ideas about gender equity.

That's why BILL AND MELINDA are spending so much MONEY to develop a MICROBICIDE.

The idea is that many women can't say No to sex.

Because men hold most of or all of the power.

Which may be true in many places, though it doesn't appear to be true in Botswana.

But -- doesn't it in that case make more sense to EMPOWER the women so that they can say -- NO.

Chuck Tarver talks about "missed opportunity."

Here's an opportunity to empower women -- because no one, including the men, wants this disease -- and it's being missed.

Yet the empowerment could well extend beyond HIV / AIDS.

Why aren't feminist groups in the US and EU jumping on that bandwagon?

Because they think it will put them on the wrong side in the sexual culture wars.

But why not give African and Asian and other women the POWER to say yes or no to sex -- and let THEM decide -- not some feminist in America -- whether to have sex.

Instead, the plan is to develop a microbicide -- which will inevitably be VERY EXPENSIVE to produce and distribute -- and which will be glommed onto and made the most use of by Westerners -- particularly gay men.

But you don't need a microbicide.

Or condoms.

The Ugandans did it without either.

And they EMPOWERED WOMEN at the same time.

They gave Women the power to say NO.

Condoms and microbicides.

I STAYED FREE OF HIV WITHOUT EITHER.

SO DID CHUCK TARVER

AND MART FINN

AND OSCAR VALLEJO

AND DON FRAZER

AND ROBERT LORING

How many of the millions of men's names would I have to list before AIDS Inc and ANAL Inc got the idea?

More than I ever could -- right?

Do *you* get the idea?

Do you understand?

Do you understand the extent to which you've been lied to and abused by the AIDS Prevention Establishment in the West?

And how much misery and suffering that same establishment has created in Africa?

Do you understand?

Do you get it?

Do you understand the nexus between anti-masculinism and the campaigns which were carried out against "manhood rituals" by European missionaries -- who were uncomfortable with Black Masculinity and African Manhood?

Do you understand?

If you do, WHY AREN'T YOU DOING ANYTHING ABOUT IT?

The hallmark of a MAN, I keep repeating, is his FIGHTING SPIRIT.

Based on what I see, there might be 10 Men who use this site.

And one WOMAN.

The rest of you are nothing.

In terms of your involvement in the Life of your Time -- you might as well be amoebas.

FIGHT BACK

Or DIE.

I know -- you don't think the DIE part is real.

Because you think you can avoid HIV -- which, given the unrelenting pressure to do anal, is problematic for most of you;

and because there are drugs to treat HIV.

Which there are -- after a fashion.

Especially if you don't mind the toxicity and brain damage and such.

But what about the next pathogen to come down the anally-vectored pike?

What are you going to do about that one dude?

And what about your MANHOOD that's gone MISSING?

What are you going to do about that?

FIGHT BACK.

or DIE.

Bill Weintraub

© All material Copyright 2007 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.

Bill Weintraub

Re: Multiple Partners Drive HIV Epidemic in Southern Africa -- and Elsewhere; European destruction of MC MANHOOD rituals and European distribution of condoms blamed

3-4-2007

No one has responded to this post.

Are you all dead?

Are you all asleep?

Look -- there's something important going on here.

We who live in America and the EU understand the connection among gay males between the suppression of MANHOOD and HIV.

We understand that the suppression of MANHOOD leads to effeminacy which leads to anal which leads to HIV infection.

But in the Washington Post article, we saw something new, and for the first time:

And that's how the suppression of a MANHOOD ritual among African MEN, a ritual which included male circumcision, resulted in massive HIV infection in Africa and the deaths of millions of people.

That's millions.

Here, I'll spell it out:

M-I-L-L-I-O-N-S

How many millions?

Do any of you know?

1 million?

2 million?

5?

10?

20?

30?

NO.

31,938,764

Why is no one commenting about that?

Does NO ONE else see the connection?

NO ONE?????????

Because it's really important.

What those few indigenous African leaders, like Museveni, who've tried to develop uniquely African responses to AIDS, have said to the world is that first the Europeans came in and fucked Africa and Africans over through exploitation of the land and the resources and the people and through denigration of African culture;

and now they're coming in again and fucking Africans over with condoms.

Here's the deal: There would have been NO GENERALIZED EPIDEMIC in Africa if those Southern African tribes had been allowed to continue to practice MC in those MANHOOD rituals.

Why am I the only one picking up on this?

Is it because you think MC is bad?

It's not bad.

It's an ancient MAN2MAN practice.

MALE Circumcision.

MEN circumcising MEN.

It's not bad.

You know who doesn't like MC?

Analists.

GAY MALE CULTURE doesn't like MC.

That's another clue that MC is NOT BAD.

See, what's going on right now is that evangelicals are flooding back into Africa to take care of all those poor suffering African souls.

WHO WOULDN'T BE SUFFERING IF THE MOTHER FUCKING EVANGELICALS HAD STAYED THE FUCK OUT OF THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Again, why am I the only one who's making this connection?

Why?

I know there are a lot of guys in here of African descent.

How many Africans died as the result of the slave trade?

And how many Africans have died as the result of the suppression of MC?

If the Washington Post is correct -- and it is correct, because I just queried one of the lead researchers, the guy who won't let me use his name, but can you blame him given that UNAIDS has known about MC since 1989 and didn't endorse it until December of 2006 --

and he told me that MC used to be widespread in Southern Africa just as it is to this day in the rest of Africa --

but that missionaries put a stop to it.

That being the case, AIDS in Africa is another instance of the mass murder of Africans by Europeans.

It's not a natural disaster.

It's a man-made disaster.

Missionary-made.

It was made by people who were uncomfortable with sexuality, with male sexuality, with Men, and with an African ritual in which Black teenagers were circumcised and thus came of sexual age.

Why were they circumcised?

So that they could have sex safely.

In The Politics of MC, I quoted from Dr Green's paper in which he in turn quoted traditional healers who understood that lack of circumcision was a problem.

How great a problem?

We know that HIV originated in Africa.

Suppose that HIV has been floating around Africa for centuries.

And that MC was an indigenous African response.

Just suppose.

Let's come back to the question of MANHOOD.

No doubt many of you think that in America we're talking about "gay men" and in Africa we're talking about "straight men" so we're talking about two different groups.

NO.

We're talking about MEN.

And we know that when you deprive MEN of their MANHOOD there are problems.

Here's today's lead story from 365Gay dot com:

Sydney Gays Celebrate Mardi Gras

by 365Gay dot com Newscenter Staff

Posted: March 3, 2007 - 4:00 pm ET

(Sydney, Australia) Actor Rupert Everett and 250 men dressed as pop singer Kylie Minogue were among 8,000 revelers who marched through Sydney late Saturday for the 29th annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

The yearly parade began as a street demonstration in 1978, but has since morphed into one of the city's biggest outdoor parties, attracting thousands of spectators from around the world.

New South Wales state police said about 350,000 people packed the sidewalks of Oxford street -- the center of Sydney's gay scene -- to catch a glimpse of the colorful floats bearing messages both political and playful.

One of the largest displays featured some 250 Minogue impersonators dubbed the "Impossible Princesses," while another float titled the Unkultured Klub of Karma Kleaners honored the former Culture Club band's lead singer, Boy George.

...

250 men dressed as Kylie Minogue.

This is Kylie Minogue:

And a float honoring Boy George:

Australia, like Africa, has a RAGING AIDS epidemic.

Indeed, it's been compared EXPLICITLY to Africa's.

Except that Australia's is among gay men.

This is from a post I made on World AIDS Day 2006:

HIV infection rate rises to epidemic levels in gay community

November 26, 2006

SYDNEY'S gay community has an infection rate of HIV that is similar to that of countries in Africa.

As organisations prepare to mark the 25th anniversary of recognising human immunodeficiency virus, they warned that infection rates were on a steady increase in Australia.

Garrett Prestage, a lecturer at the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research, said that, in the inner-city area, 10 to 18 per cent of the gay population was HIV infected.

In Lesotho in Africa, the rate was 20 per cent last year, UN figures show.

Last year in NSW [New South Wales], 954 people were diagnosed with HIV and nearly three-quarters of them caught the disease through homosexual contact. By comparison only 109 people in NSW were reported to have had the mumps last year.

"For gay men, HIV is a massive epidemic," Dr Prestage said. "If you are a gay man living in central Sydney, you are living with rates of HIV that are equivalent to sub-Saharan Africa."

...

Actually, they're higher than sub-Saharan Africa's -- but that's a fine point.

And here's a little news report from a couple weeks ago:

HIV rate surges in Cairns

yahoo via ABC news Australia

Tuesday February 20, 2007

There has been a spate of new HIV infections in Cairns in far north Queensland.

Queensland Health figures show 13 men have been diagnosed with the illness in the past two months, the same number usually recorded over a year in the far north.

Dr Darren Russell from the Cairns Sexual Health Service says the increase is disturbing.

"This is very unusual," he said.

"We would normally only have this number over a whole year.

"Most of these cases have in fact been really new infections. That is, these men have acquired it in the last 12 months.

"So we're having a little epidemic of HIV and the cause is unprotected sex."

Is there a connection between 250 men dressed as Kylie Minogue in Sydney and a surge in AIDS in Cairns?

Oh yeah.

How many men do you think will get infected during Sydney Mardi Gras?

And how many of the men dressed as Kylie Minogue will be or already are infected?

So: in the West, MEN are deprived of MANHOOD and get AIDS.

In Africa, MEN are deprived of MANHOOD and get AIDS.

Pay attention.

Figure it out.

Stop thinking about "gay" and "straight."

Start thinking about MEN.

You're a MAN.

What happens to you affects MEN in Africa.

What happens to MEN in Africa affects you.

And when I say Pay Attention I mean it.

You don't donate, you don't post, you're DEAD.

My lover wanted to LIVE.

He was active and engaged with the world.

You're nothing.

What's the point to being alive and being nothing?

None.

FIGHT BACK

OR DIE.

Bill Weintraub

© All material Copyright 2007 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.

Bill Weintraub

Re: The Suppression of Manhood and the Rise of AIDS

3-5-2007

Here are three follow-up articles for those interested.

The first is Drs Halperin and Bailey's 1999 article in the Lancet pleading with their colleagues to pay attention to the already existing studies on MC -- and to do more.

The second is an op-ed Dr Halperin wrote for the SF Chron in 2000 which talks about, among other things, MC, missionaries, and Southern Africa.

And the third is a profile of Dr Halperin which was just released by the Harvard School of Public Health.

It details his struggle to get recognition of the role of MC in preventing HIV infection.

Here's an excerpt:

The association between uncircumcised men and increased HIV risk was documented in 1989 by a team led by William Cameron of the University of Ottawa. In a prospective study in the Lancet, the researchers showed that uncircumcised men in Kenya faced more than eight times the risk for HIV-1 infection than their circumcised counterparts.

Ten years after that study, Halperin and Bailey published their own paper in the Lancet. In their 1999 piece, they reviewed the decade of research that had ensued since the Cameron paper. Four out of six additional prospective studies had also shown significant relative risks for HIV infection among uncircumcised men. Twenty-seven of 38 cross-sectional studies found a significant association between lack of circumcision and HIV infection.

The pair highlighted the incredible differences of HIV infection rates within the same parts of the world, drawing attention to low rates in most of west Africa, as well as in the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Indonesia, compared to much higher rates in parts of east and southern Africa and in Thailand, India, and Cambodia. Halperin and Bailey argued that differences in surveillance and prevention efforts alone could not explain the patterns. In fact, they noted that nearly all men in the areas where there were low HIV infection rates had been circumcised, usually by puberty, whereas most men in the areas with high rates had not been circumcised.

And they described the research that presented a biological explanation for why circumcision decreases HIV risk during heterosexual sex. Circumcision seems to protect men because the underside of the foreskin "is like an Achilles heel for HIV infection in men,'' said Halperin. "The foreskin is vulnerable to tearing and bleeding during sex. And the inner surface of the foreskin is loaded with Langerhans, macrophage, and CD4 cells, which are targets of HIV.'' The uptake of HIV in those immune cells, due mainly to the lack of a hardened, or keratinized, skin coating over the inner foreskin mucosa, is about nine times greater than in the mucosa of the female cervix, which had long been thought to be the most vulnerable part of the body of cells to HIV infection, he said.

Halperin and a small group of like-minded researchers soldiered on. From 2001 to 2005, Halperin served as the senior Prevention Advisor for the Office of HIV/AIDS at USAID. One of his duties involved developing and overseeing pilot programs in Zambia, Haiti, and South Africa that introduced male reproductive health services, including the availability of safe adult male circumcision.

His colleague, Robert Bailey, with whom Halperin wrote the Lancet piece, went on to lead a randomized, controlled trial in Kenya investigating the association between circumcision and HIV risk. It was this trial, along with one conducted in Uganda by a different research team, that was halted in December 2006 because the results so strongly suggested that circumcision halves a man's risk of contracting HIV from a woman. Just last week, the Lancet published the final data from the Kenya and Uganda studies, which now suggest the reduction in risk could be as high as 65 percent.

Now, another study in Uganda funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is looking at whether male circumcision directly reduces transmission rates among women. In any case, noted Halperin, if fewer men are infected, women would benefit indirectly.

The risk reduction provided by circumcision appears as good, if not better, than what may be expected from a still nonexistent HIV vaccine. "This virus is incredibly challenging for the development of a vaccine,'' said Halperin. "It mutates very quickly. It is very hard to pin down. The first vaccine trials have not been very promising so far, and most experts on vaccines don't believe we will find anything close to a 100 percent vaccine, even if we get one. It's not that kind of vaccine. If we get one, it will probably be only partly effective. Or it may only slow the progression of HIV to AIDS. And even the most optimistic researchers say we may not have one of those ready for use for another 10 or 20 years, at the earliest."

Halperin continues to conduct and analyze research on global sexual behavior, in addition to investigating and publishing on the extensive data regarding male circumcision, including the real-world programmatic implications of that evidence. For several years, he has explored the use of the so-called "ABC" approach to HIV prevention (Abstinence, Be faithful/reduce partners, or use Condoms consistently). He is particularly focused on researching the "B" part of the approach, trying to determine the role that multiple and concurrent sexual partnerships play in HIV transmission, especially in high-prevalence regions of Africa.

...

So:

In 1989 (!!!) Cameron found that MC protected by a factor of eight: "uncircumcised men in Kenya faced more than eight times the risk for HIV-1 infection than their circumcised counterparts."

In 2003, a mere 14 years later, the Reynolds study in India found that "Uncircumcised men have an eight fold higher risk of becoming infected with HIV compared to circumcised men..."

But that still wasn't enough for AIDS Inc and its lackeys at UNAIDS.

Piot and his buds dragged their feet for three more years and two months, specifically until 12/19/2006, before finally agreeing that MC was an important intervention and that "AIDS-stricken Southern African nations should develop a policy of mass male circumcision to fight the disease."

So: 1989 was the year that MC was first brought, by a researcher named Cameron, to the attention of the AIDS Prevention Establishment, and although Cameron's findings were right on the money, MC was ignored.

In favor of condoms.

Which was an intervention developed for use with gay men in the US and EU.

In terms of human suffering, misery, and death, how important is the year 1989?

It's important.

If you go to this page on avert dot org (disclaimer: I don't like avert dot org, but I think their stats in this instance are fine) and scroll down, you'll find a chart detailing deaths per year in South Africa starting in 1997.

The people who died in 1997 probably got infected ca 1989 - 1991.

316,000 people died in 97.

365,000 died in 98.

380,000 in 99.

Could those lives have been saved?

YES.

A program of mass male circumcision would have saved minimally 65% of those lives.

In 1999 alone that would have been 247,000 people who did NOT die.

Let's forget Cameron and 1989 for a moment.

How many people died in Africa between 1999 -- when Halperin and Bailey made their appeal in the Lancet -- and 2006?

About 2,000,000 per year.

About 14,000,000 total.

In 2004, 567,488 people died in South Africa alone.

That's in one year.

That's more people than have died in America (estimated at 550,394) over the entire 25+ years of the epidemic.

Why did all those millions die?

Because in the 19th century European missionaries, heterosexualized European missionaries, went into Southern Africa and, protected by European military might, disrupted and destroyed MANHOOD rituals which included male circumcision.

That's what happened.

The Havard School of Public Health:

[Halperin and Bailey] highlighted the incredible differences of HIV infection rates within the same parts of the world, drawing attention to low rates in most of west Africa, as well as in the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Indonesia, compared to much higher rates in parts of east and southern Africa and in Thailand, India, and Cambodia. Halperin and Bailey argued that differences in surveillance and prevention efforts alone could not explain the patterns. In fact, they noted that nearly all men in the areas where there were low HIV infection rates had been circumcised, usually by puberty, whereas most men in the areas with high rates had not been circumcised.

That's it.

Circumcision is the key, and in Southern Africa, heterosexualized European missionaries destroyed MANHOOD rituals which had kept African MEN and WOMEN free of HIV for -- years, decades, centuries???

We'll never know.

I think HIV traveled from Africa to Belgium to America, where it took off among gay men, and was then re-introduced to Africa.

But that doesn't matter.

Truth is, once African men had been stripped of the protection afforded by MC, they and their women and children were just the walking dead.

So: MANHOOD MATTERS.

Heterosexualization in the West ghettoized and effeminized men who were strongly same-sex attracted, and left them vulnerable to HIV.

Heterosexualization in the form of Western missionaries deprived African men of their age-old cultural protections against STD, and left them vulnerable to HIV.

And tens of millions died.

And more will die.

One more thing:

Does anyone remember Haiti?

I daresay not.

But in the early years of the epidemic here in America, the only two groups affected were "homosexuals" and Haitians.

There was a joke that made the rounds of the very closeted -- and racist -- gay male community:

What's the hardest part of being diagnosed with AIDS?

Telling your family that you're Haitian.

Why did those Haitians have AIDS?

Lack of MC.

Modern-day Haitians are the descendants of Africans who were brought to Hispaniola as slaves.

You can be sure that their ancestors, who came from west Africa, Angola, etc, were circumcised.

But that was taken from them.

Today, most Haitians, who are desperately poor, are not circumcised -- though they would like to be.

Middle-class Haitians are.

The poor aren't.

And they continue to die -- of AIDS.

Bill Weintraub

© All material Copyright 2007 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.