By Rosalind Harrison-Chirimuuta & Richard Chirimuuta
AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean 1997
https://www.virusmyth.com/aids/hiv/rcafrica.htm
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Introduction
Western scientists have promoted the hypothesis that the AIDS epidemic began in Africa, arguing that either AIDS had existed for many years in an African "lost tribe" or that a retrovirus crossed the species barrier from monkey to man. The scientific evidence in support of this hypothesis has included AIDS-like cases from Africa that predated the epidemic in the West, seroepidemiological evidence for early African infection, and the isolation of retroviruses from African monkeys considered similar to the human immunodeficiency virus. Yet when the scientific literature supporting an African origin is examined it is found to be contradictory, insubstantial or unsound, whilst the possibility that AIDS was introduced to Africa from the West has not been seriously investigated. The belief that the AIDS epidemic originated in Africa has also distorted Western perceptions of the scale and mode of spread of the epidemic in Africa, and it would seem that much of the research into AIDS and Africa has been influenced by racism and not science.
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Because we suspected a racist motivation for the "science" that was arguing for AIDS from Africa we decided to review the scientific literature, eventually publishing our work in a book(7). When questioning the African hypothesis we anticipated a difficult task, as the research was conducted by reputable scientists and was subjected to peer review prior to publication. As our study progressed it became increasingly clear to us that the racist preconceptions of the researchers led them to conclusions that had no scientific foundation.
The Ideology of Racism
It is perhaps unwise to assume a consensus view of racism where none may exist, and for our purposes we would consider racism to be the ideology promoted initially by the Caribbean sugar-planters and slave-merchants to justify, sustain and defend their activities so important to the enrichment of Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. The ideology was adapted and developed during the period of European colonisation during the 19th century and in the 20th century, reaching its apogee in the death camps of Nazi Germany. Unlike the variety of superstitious beliefs Europeans held of other peoples in previous centuries racism was relatively systematic and internally consistent, and with time acquired a pseudo-scientific veneer that glossed over its irrationalities and enabled it to claim intellectual respectability(8). Although the edifice of racism has begun to crack in the latter part of this century, racism remains integral to the European world view.
Many leading doctors and scientists of their day made their contributions to the pseudo-science of racism.(8,9) When humans were placed at the top of the evolutionary tree, Africans were allocated a separate species between other humans and apes and there were numerous suggestions that Africans had sexual intercourse with apes, or were the result of such unions. As Africans were deemed more akin to animals than humans, they were by definition incapable of civilised behaviour. They were believed to be sexually unrestrained and to have larger sexual organs than other races, and were therefore more prone to sexually transmitted diseases. They were deceitful, treacherous, lazy, faithless, cruel and bad-tempered. African skulls were studied and were considered to be smaller than those of Europeans, establishing beyond doubt that Africans had the lesser intelligence.(8) In one form or another, explicitly or implicitly, many of these notions have appeared in the scientific literature about AIDS and Africa.
Racism and "AIDS from Africa"
The first black people diagnosed as suffering from AIDS in any number were Haitians living in the United States.(10,11) The possibility that they may have caught the infection from Americans in the United States or in Haiti was not given serious consideration and Haiti was immediately accused of being the source of the epidemic.(11) Soon Haitians with AIDS were being reported from all over the Western world(12,13,14,15) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, included Haitians as a group at risk for AIDS along with homosexuals, intravenous drug users and haemophiliacs. It was only in 1985 that CDC, faced with overwhelming evidence that Haitians per se were no more at risk for AIDS than anyone else,(16) removed them from the high risk classification, but not before Haitians en masse were dismissed from their jobs, evicted from their homes, and even housed in separate prisons. Abandoning Haiti, the researchers then turned their attention to Africa.
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A second, and we suspect far more important route by which AIDS may have been introduced into Africa is sex tourism. AIDS researchers, who seem unable to contemplate that white men can infect African women, have presented AIDS in Africa as a disease transmitted by promiscuous men (and to racist minds all Africans are promiscuous) to prostitutes who then infect foreign clients.(80) Prostitution in African countries tends to occur at two levels: with younger and prettier women seeking valuable foreign exchange who work in the large hotels and night spots which attract foreign tourists and wealthy Africans, and with older and less attractive women whose clientele is predominantly poor and local. If African realities agreed with the researchers suppositions, older African women and their local clientele would be bearing the brunt of the epidemic, but to the contrary it is the young women frequenting the tourist centres and foreign military and naval establishments who are developing AIDS and are transmitting it to their African sexual partners: husbands, boyfriends and wealthy African clients.(58,81)
Conclusion
When discussing the issue of the origin of AIDS we are frequently asked by well meaning people "Does it really matter where AIDS came from, shouldn't we forget about the origin and concentrate on dealing with the epidemic". Certainly we agree that every effort should be made to contain the epidemic, in Africa as elsewhere in the world, but AIDS researchers have opened a Pandora's box of racism and prejudice that cannot be closed by simply dropping the subject of the origin. Incorrect assumptions about the source and nature of the African AIDS epidemic will also inevitably lead to inappropriate programs for containment and control. Africans have complained that scarce resources from the WHO have been diverted from programs to control major epidemic diseases that are killing many more people than AIDS, and insufficient emphasis has been placed on the risks of sex for money whilst the dangers of low levels of promiscuity have been exaggerated to such an extent that people have even committed suicide because they feared they had AIDS.
Although racism in its various manifestations has come under increasing challenge in recent years it remains a potent influence, and it is naive to believe that medical science is immune to this particular poison. With the emergence of a new and deadly sexually transmitted disease it was perhaps almost inevitable that Black people would be attributed with its origin and transmission, whatever the evidence. Racism is an irrational system of beliefs without scientific foundation, and much of the confused, contradictory and simply nonsensical conclusions reached by the scientists about AIDS and Africa can be attributed to their attempts to square their research findings with their racist preconceptions, rather than objective scientific reality. The determined pursuit of the African origin has been of little scientific or practical merit, but instead has escalated racism, created conflict between African and Western countries, diverted resources away from areas where they are much needed, and has wasted time. Let us hope we can learn from our mistakes, otherwise we will be doomed to repeat them. *
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