CHAPTER 2

Perhaps in citing these passages, especially from "Eros & Civilisation", we have moved forward far too quickly in terms of the presentation of our narrative, which the omnipotent apparatus views and denounces as non-conformist.

Let us therefore retrace our steps and, as it were, begin from the beginning.

The Book of Genesis in the Holy Bible, says:

" And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness."

Taking example from this, though disadvantaged by the fact that we do not have the power of the Creator, we trust that what we present in this brief discourse will help all of us to separate the light from the darkness with regard to the issue of AIDS. This may be difficult. It is, nevertheless, critically important.

Given that our minds on this matter have become thoroughly clogged by the information communicated by the omnipotent apparatus, a miracle will have to be achieved to get all our people to use their brains, rather than perish on emotional responses based on greatly heightened levels of fear.

In reality, as will become clear, what we are about is the cleaning of the Augean stables that constrain the African mind. Let us present our first scientific fact.

The first report on the incidence of HIV in South and Southern Africa was published in the "New England Journal of Medicine" and the "South African Medical Journal", both in 1985.

Two of the most important findings in this report were that in our country and region:

· HIV infection was confined to male homosexuals; and,
· HIV was not endemic in this region of the world.

To quote this report, it said:

" The only positive subjects were in the group compromising male homosexuals. The majority of these positive subjects had either recently been to the United States or had had sexual contact with other homosexuals who had visited the United States.Our preliminary data show that the agent implicated in causing AIDS, HTLV-III (later named HIV), is not endemic in this part of Africa."

During the same year, October 1985, German researchers had an article published in the British medical journal, The Lancet. They stated that:

" the data suggest that HTLV-III was rare in Africa until recently, and still is rare in much of the continent."

Some of our friends, the friends of the Africans, say that five years later, this situation had changed completely. They say that now, in our region and country, the HI Virus was transmitted heterosexually and that it had become endemic.

The point made in the 1985 report about male homosexuals and HIV coincided with what science said about the incidence of HIV in the United States and Western Europe at the time.

To all intents and purposes, 15 years later, this situation has not changed both in the US and in Western Europe. But, as we have said, and as is generally known, our own situation has changed radically, resulting also in it being said that we now have the highest incidence of HIV or the spread of HIV in the world.
The question that arises from this is - why! Why does the same Virus behave differently in the US and Western Europe from the way it behaves in Southern Africa!

It would seem obvious that this question must be asked. If we are interested in the advance of scientific knowledge, the better to understand the African human condition, it is imperative that an answer be found.

It would seem equally obvious that for us successfully to deal with the HI Virus as it affects us, we need to understand what induces it to behave differently in different parts of the world.

In answer to these questions, some of our friends, the friends of the Africans, say that we are affected by a particular type or variant of the HI Virus, which is unique to ourselves and which also mutates at a high frequency rate.

However, this answer throws up new questions. Why is this special type of HI Virus confined only to our region of the world! Why does it not spread to other areas, even within Africa! What happened to the 1985 South African HI Virus which behaved in the same way as the US and West European HI Virus! If it mutated into what it is today, why did it not mutate in the same way in the US and Western Europe!

Once more, scientifically substantiated answers to these questions are necessary to enable us to defeat the HI Virus as it affects us. It would seem only logical, once the assertion was made that ours is a unique HI Virus, that, consequently, unique solutions have to be found to respond to this distinct situation.

Up to now, no answers have been provided to any of the questions that have been posed. Instead, in the name of science and friendship with the Africans, the omnipotent apparatus of which Marcuse wrote, has sought to present honest questions as a manifestation of unacceptable non-conformity.

It has done everything it could, and continues to act, to punish those who dare to ask questions. It uses its might, sustained by the self-repression of the Africans, to ensure the permanent repression of those who inquire.

In 1995 three scientists, Zvi Bentwich, Alexander Kalinkovich & Ziva Weisman, sought to provide answers to some of these questions in a 'Viewpoint' published in "Immunology Today" (Vol 16 No 4). They wrote:

" Several features of the AIDS epidemic in Africa mark it as a distinct entity from the disease that is present in North America and Europe: it is primarily a heterosexually transmitted disease with a male-to-female ratio of 1:1, and lacks the known 'classical' risk groups of male homosexuals and intravenous (i.v.) drug users; it is probably transmitted more easily; the progression of infection and disease is faster - the time from infection to onset of clinical manifestations and overall survival may be shorter; and the clinical manifestations are different, particularly the main opportunistic infections and the main organ systems involved.

" Our view is that profound changes in the host immune response may account for the dramatic differences in the behaviour of the AIDS epidemic in Africa and in other developing countries. Such changes make the host more susceptible to HIV infection and less capable of controlling the infection once it is acquired. Infectious diseases, mostly helminth (intestinal worm) infections endemic in Africa and the developing countries, activate the immune system and alter its balance in such a way that makes the host more receptive to HIV and more vulnerable to its effects. This altered 'background' immune response must be taken into consideration when designing vaccines and devising new therapies for HIV in Africa and other developing countries. (Our emphasis).

" The average African host is exposed to a huge number of infectious diseases from early childhood onwards. These include various bacterial, viral and parasitic infections. Noteworthy is the wide prevalence of helminth infections, malaria and tuberculosis in most parts of Africa: especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, and in East and West Africa. Also of central importance is the very high prevalence of STDs, particularly genital ulcer diseases (GUDs), which play an important role in facilitating the dissemination of HIV infection into the general population.(Our emphasis).

" In addition to the central role of STDs, important cofactors such as the cultural habit of scarification, as well as transfusion, hygiene and nutrition, may facilitate HIV transmission and infection."

On February 27, 2002, the British newspaper "The Guardian" carried two articles, one entitled: "Sex diseases soar among generation no longer in fear of Aids epidemic", and the other: "Scourge of syphilis returns as gays fail to heed safe sex message".

The latter article on syphilis says:

" Within the past year there have been outbreaks of syphilis in Manchester, North London and Brighton. The disease, which had almost disappeared from Britain, can lead to brain damage, disability and even death if untreated.

" Around three quarters of the Manchester cases have been in young gay or bisexual men, typically in their twenties or early thirties. The heterosexual cases were thought to be a separate cluster with links abroad. About a quarter had another sexually transmitted infection as well as syphilis and around a fifth knew they were HIV positive.

" A Manchester health authority report said the men told of heavy use of alcohol, and drugs 'with aphrodisiac and disinhibitory effects'... Further research is needed into why people seem not to be heeding safer sex advice, particularly in relation to unprotected anal sex. Reasons could include boredom with the messages, people feeling (inaccurately) that HIV is curable."

The other article says:

" Sexually transmitted diseases are rampaging through the UK unchecked as a new generation of young people, who missed the Aids scare of the 1980s, fail to protect themselves by practising safe sex.

" According to a report published yesterday by the British Medical Association, (BMA), sexually transmitted infections, which include HIV/Aids, gonorrhoea and syphilis, have soared by almost 300, 000 cases between 1995 and 2000. The consequences can be devastating. Those who become HIV positive may not die but are condemned to a lifetime on toxic drugs, while thousands of women who unknowingly contract chlamydia, which often has no symptoms, risk infertility.

" Says the BMA, the group most at risk now - aged 18-24 - are too young to have seen the (1980s Aids) adverts or been impressed by (their) dire message.

" Paul Martin, sexual health programme manager in Brighton, where gay men have been encouraged to go for six monthly sexual health 'MOTs' because of an outbreak of syphilis, said their clinics were now 'bursting at the seams'."

"The Daily Telegraph" also of February 27, 2002 reported that:

" From 1995 to 2000 the figures for new cases (of) gonorrhoea were up by 102 per cent., chlamydia up by 107 per cent., and syphilis up by 145 per cent.Thousands of cases of at least 22 other sexually transmitted infections provide the new total.

" Dr James Bingham, consultant in genito-urinary medicine at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals in London, said syphilis was reaching the level seen when Second World War troops came home and gonorrhoea was at levels seen before the Aids campaigns."

The same edition of "The Daily Telegraph" carries a letter by Robert Whelan of "Civitas" which comments on the BMA report. It is entitled "The results of Aids scaremongering". The letter says:

" The spread of STDs, which is particularly concentrated among teenagers and the early twenties, can truly be described as having reached epidemic proportions, and the consequences of some of these conditions can be both serious and long lasting.

" However, the false sense of security that young people have about STDs is partly due to the hysterical promotion of Aids as a major public health issue in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Aids "epidemic" never materialised and, partly as a result, people now treat all warnings about the consequences of sexual activity as scaremongering. (Our emphasis.)

" The question is: what do we do about it now? Unfortunately, the leaders of the medical profession appear to have few ideas."

The issues raised by Robert Whelan apply directly and immediately to us. We are the latest victim of the scare mongering that visited the people of the US, the UK and the rest of the western world "in the late 1980s and early 1990s." We too are already harvesting the bitter fruits of the sustained campaign of which Robert Whelan complains.

Had he spoken out against this scare mongering in the 1980s and 1990s, Robert Whelan would have been denounced by the omnipotent apparatus as engaging in a "denial" that would condemn millions of Britons to death.

But, as in the UK, it is precisely this scare mongering that is condemning millions of our own people to ill-health, disability and death because of a refusal to recognise the critical importance of the diseases of poverty and other illnesses that afflict our people, including STDs. This is done to sustain a massive political-commercial campaign to promote anti-retroviral drugs.

The British Medical Association was reporting on the situation in the UK as at year 2000. We are talking here of a country that has a very well developed health infrastructure and a population that is not generally affected by diseases of poverty or exceedingly low levels of education.

The article we quoted earlier, published in 1995 by "Immunology Today" and written by Zvi Bentwich et al, which pointed to "the central role" of sexually transmitted diseases in contributing to immune deficiency, referred especially to Africa and the rest of the developing world.

In that case we were talking of countries that have a very weak health infrastructure, endemic diseases of poverty and widespread ignorance, which results in many taboos and superstitions. If it can be said now of a country as developed as the UK, that a crisis of STDs is emerging, we can only imagine what is happening in the countries of which Bentwich wrote!

Research from the MRC Maternal and Perinatal Research Unit at Kalafong Hospital in Tshwane indicates that between 2,8% and 11% of stillbirths and perinatal deaths were attributed to syphilis in 1993. (Delport, De Jong, Pattinson & Odendaal).

Since then, the prevalence of active syphilis infection in mothers in antenatal care has been reduced by more than half. This success is due to improved primary health care, antenatal care, supply of penicillin, etc.

It is estimated that a 20% reduction in STD's in South Africa over the next 15 years would result in HIV sero prevalence of below 1% in 2015 rather than the projected 16% (Wasserheit 1992). There are 11 million episodes of STD's being treated annually in South Africa, often unsatisfactorily (Reddy, 1999), with 12% of men report symptoms suggestive of STI in the previous 12 months. (South African Demographic Health Survey, 2000).

Because of these prevalence levels, our government is paying particular attention to the prevention and treatment of STD's. For the reasons we have already stated, this will make an important contribution to the fight against acquired immune deficiency.

But for the omnipotent apparatus the most important thing is the marketing of the anti-retroviral drugs. The issues raised by Bentwich and others, of the importance of STDs with regard to immune deficiency have been buried by the imposition of a blanket silence about the incidence and prevalence of these diseases. At the same time, it is demanded of all of us that we must break the silence!

Hopefully, the report of the British Medical Association will become better known to alert even us, who, as Marcuse said, may be suffering from the self-repression of the repressed individual. We should be alerted to the fact that if STDs in a country as developed as the UK are "rampaging through the (country) unchecked", then the situation in our countries must be catastrophic.

Two or three years ago, the South African Medical Research Council (MRC) prepared a report for Eskom on "the incidence of HIV" among the staff of the company. In this report the MRC drew attention to two disturbing matters.

One of these was the high incidence of STDs among our people, as noted by Bentwich et al. The second was the very shoddy medical treatment of these diseases by general practitioners in our country, which leaves many infected people continuing to incubate these diseases because of incomplete and incompetent treatment by our doctors. The article by Bentwich et al draws attention to the serious threat this poses with regard to our immune systems.

Devoted as it is to the propagation of the faith about HIV/AIDS and the marketing of anti-retroviral drugs, the MRC - a state institution supposedly dedicated to serve the people of South Africa - says virtually nothing in its public communications about STDs in our country and what we should do about them.

We know why the pharmaceutical companies pay little attention to the overwhelming majority of diseases that afflict the poor. The simple reason is that the treatment of these diseases does not offer big profits.

The public servants working at the MRC have still to explain why they seem so little interested in the overwhelming majority of diseases that afflict the poor. Could it be the same reasons as those influencing the behaviour of the commercial enterprises!

In a year 2000 letter to a WHO Task Force on STDs, Dr John B. Scythes of Canada wrote:

" Our basic concept is that by stopping syphilis, or at least slowing it down, far fewer people will get HIV-infected and/or develop AIDS - but not just because of fewer opportunities for transmission of the virus. I respectfully suggest that syphilis represents more than simply an ulcerative or focal activation phenomenon in HIV acquisition/AIDS. Syphilis may also turn out to be an important immunologic co-factor for susceptibility to active viral expression and progression to AIDS.

" I am suggesting you consider the problem of latent syphilis, when the disease has gone untreated or inadequately treated for some highly variable period of time, a phenomenon which has simply not been investigated in modern times in terms of its immunologic consequences." (Our emphasis).