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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 168 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 168, October 1993.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The Slow Plague
Peter Gould
Blackwell £12.99
The still popular myth that Aids is a ‘gay plague’ is once again demolished by the facts, and these facts make appalling reading. When the disease is looked at on a worldwide scale two conclusions stand out: that it is a disease of poverty and that there are few areas of the globe still untouched by the virus.
This book is described as a ‘geography of Aids’. What is different about its approach to much of the existing writing is its emphasis not just on how fast the virus is spreading and to how many people, but where infection is rising and how it ‘travels’ across continents. Gould claims that by ignoring this angle and being mesmerised by ‘rates of infection’ mainstream research has been dangerously blinkered.
This argument seems a strong one. He puts across often quite complex ideas in a language that is both powerful and easy to understand. At one moment he quotes infection rates in the millions and the next describes the day to day experiences of a Thai commercial sex worker.
His studies on the geographical diffusion of HIV encompass sexual behaviour, religious beliefs, increasing worldwide air links, women’s oppression and, underlying it all, poverty.
For that reason Africa commands the most frightening statistics – still likely to be underestimates. From the big cities, like Nairobi where virtually all prostitutes are HIV positive, to the small rest stops for long distance truckers up and down East Africa where 30 to 80 percent of the bar girls are infected. Condoms are rarely used where for a rural African, ‘popping to the local chemist might take several days and the price of a packet of three would feed a family of 10.’
But Aids is not spread by sexual contact alone. Lack of hygiene in cashless hospitals and unavailability of clean needles can lead to scores of children being inoculated for one dangerous disease only to be infected by another fatal one.
HIV infection of blood banks is sometimes so high that US Embassy officials are flown out for any invasive treatment, including dental care. For ordinary Africans this is not an option. Gould argues that the blame for the scale of infection must be firmly placed at the door of governments who, for political and economic reasons, have denied vital information and warnings on the disease, and at a system where even the knowledge that does exist cannot be used to save lives because of funds. The story is repeated from Bangkok to the Bronx with devastating consequences.
Gould counterposes the suffering and lives lost through lack of money to the huge sums made in the Aids industry. Here research grants and government funds are furiously fought over by well heeled academics who regurgitate dated and useless statistics and rarely rock the boat of assumed wisdom. It is they he claims who are ‘making a killing’ out of Aids.
Short of a cure, Gould suggests controversial solutions – such as compulsory testing and quarantine – yet throughout manages to maintain a human compassion in his science makes his book compelling reading.
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