Sad numbers prove Religious Right wrong.

Sadly, one of the dominant features of the Religious Right today is their unabashed tendency to lie to the public in order to promote their own agenda. Even when the facts are documented and easily discoverable, or even pointed out to them, they deny them and continue with their lies. When falsehoods are repeated, even when evidence proves them false, then the issue is honesty, not error.

You may remember the Republican state senator from Tennessee, Stacey Campfield, who went into a little rant about how only gays get AIDS and that they caught it from having sex with a monkey and infected the heterosexual community. This was all invented by his hateful, little mind. In fact, none of that is true. He also said that it is almost impossible for heterosexuals to contract the disease. Here are some sad statistics from the good people at the South African Institute of Race Relations.

The population of South Africa is just under 50 million, but the round figure will do. The United States, in comparison is about 311.6 million. South Africa has approximately 5.58 million HIV infections while the significantly larger United States has 1.1 million cases. The population of the US is 6.2 times larger than that of South Africa, yet their HIV infection rate is 5 times larger.

Who is it that suffers from HIV in South Africa? As is often the case, it is mostly women and children. The SAIRR says that 53% of the cases in South Africa are among women ages 15 t0 49. Now, you have to understand that HIV infection as a result of sexual contact between women is extremely difficult. It isn't impossible, but it is very, very unlikely. These women contracted the disease from men, and not from gay men. About 8% of all victims are children under the age of 14 years old. The vast majority of them were born infected because their mothers were infected.

Only about 0.6% of all HIV cases are in North America (Canada, the US, and Mexico combined). In Western Europe the infection rate is close around 0.2%. These are the parts of the world where the gay community was hit hardest—and they are also the parts of the world with some of the lowest infection rates around. There are an estimated 34 million people, world-wide, with HIV—and about 67% of those cases are in Subsaharan Africa. In the West the total number of infections is about 2.1 million, a fraction of those cases. And while South and South-East Asia has relatively low infection rates they account for 4 million cases, more than double those in Europe and North America.

Of course, not even all those 1.1 million cases in America are among gay men. Of the 1.1 million Americans with HIV about 300,000 are women. Again, they caught the disease by heterosexual contact (66%) or sharing infected needles (32%) during drug use. That leaves around 800,000 men with HIV infections. It is estimate that 488,000 men contracted HIV through gay sex. Another 80,000 might have, but were also injection drug users which is a more potent means of infection. About 232,000 were men who contracted the disease either through needle usage or heterosexual sex. So, even in the United States, where HIV hit the gay community early on, most of the infections are among heterosexuals, not homosexuals.

And, in those areas of the world with higher infections rates than our own, the overwhelming majority of cases are due to heterosexual infections. In those countries infections among heterosexuals is significantly higher than in the United States. Given that most the worlds infections are in those countries, and given that a significantly higher percentage of them are among heterosexuals, this means that the percentage of HIV infection caused through homosexual contact, worldwide, is relatively small—far smaller than it is the United States.

These are all sad numbers. It really shouldn't matter who is infected, or how they are infected. HIV remains a crisis for the world and is killing millions of people. What is sadder is how the Religious Right distorts the numbers to try to convince the public that hating homosexuals is somehow a rational thing because of the tiny percentages of HIV cases in the US, the majority of whom are heterosexuals.

What is really awful, if you pause to think about it, is that the disinformation that these religious kooks spread about HIV actually gives people a false perception of the risks. And, if they buy into the "hate the homosexual" message that these fanatics are pushing, and assume that most HIV victims are "evil gays" then the response to this crisis will be far less than what it should be. If these Christians come to believe that most HIV victims are gay men, and are thus less inclined to want to help end the crisis, the people who suffer as a result will be overwhelmingly heterosexual.

Crappy reporting sells but is it journalism?

I've seen this story making the rounds of the major media outlets. I specifically remember the Washington Post making this claim, and now Time magazine does as well. The claim: "Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that 1 in 5 sexually active gay and bisexual men in America are HIV-positive but that 44% of them don't know it."

What's wrong with that claim? Simple: It isn't true. This is not what the CDC said. But once the media starts spreading a false story they all tend to jump in line and do the same thing. Time is repeating the falsehood that the Washington Post started: "One in five gay men in the United States has HIV and almost half of those who carry the virus are unaware that they are infected..."

In both articles, with the sensational false claim in the first paragraph, you have to start reading down the article to discover facts that dispute the lede of the story.

The original claim is that 20% of all gay men across the US are HIV positive. But farther down the story you discover that the CDC tested 8,000 gay men in 21 major cities only. In other words the demographics of the test population was skewed to the major cities only, thus excluding all the gay men who live in rural areas or the suburbs.

Quite honestly speaking the lifestyle of gay men in urban areas is vastly different than that of gay men living on a farm in Kansas—just as the lifestyle of young straights in the major cities is different from their counterparts in the rest of the country.

You simply can not draw nation-wide conclusions by only surveying a very specific subset of the population.

One of the major differences is that the average age of people living in major cities, among the gay population at least, would tend to be younger and thus more sexually active. Living in a major city is not unusually for gay men, but many tend to move out of the cities as they age. Many, contrary to popular assumptions, never move to a major urban area in the first place. In addition the risks are not spread equally among all races. HIV infections are higher in the black community than in the white community and blacks are more likely to live in major cities than are whites.

Everything about this study skews it toward the highest infection possible. But the CDC is not to blame, that is what they were studying. It is the sloppy reporting of the media that is creating a false meme that the Right will use in their anti-gay campaigns. The CDC actually warned readers of the report that "these findings are limited to men who frequented MSM-identified venues (most of which were bars [45%] and dance clubs [22%])...."

By MSM they mean men who have sex with other men. The CDC found that a lot of men who are sexually active with other men deny that they are gay—this has been especially true in the black community—just ask Bishop Long if you don't believe me.

That reveals that not only is the sample intentionally skewed toward urban settings, but it is also skewed to a specific subgroup of urban gay men—those who frequent bars and dance clubs. Again this skews in favor of younger, single, more sexually adventurous young men. Older gay men in relationships, who rarely visit the clubs, are left out.

This one in five infection rate isn't even indicative of gay men in 21 major cities. Don't bother reading the mainstream media to find that out. The articles I read left out the part of the survey being done in gay bars and dance clubs. So, while they did mention the survey was done in 21 major cities, they left out that only a very specific subgroup of gay men were approached for the study: younger men who frequent gay bars and dance clubs.

To say that what is true for young gay men who frequent gay bars is true, on average, for all gay men in the United States is not just sloppy journalism, it is gross misreporting of the facts. This would be similar to surveying a frat house keg party in order to determine the drinking habits of the average American. Yet you will find the major media outlets making the same mistake. Time and the Washington Post are not local rags produced by amateurs.

The CDC actually warned readers not to jump to the false conclusion that this reflects the entire gay population of America. They wrote, "the results are not representative of all MSM..." The CDC actually puts the infection rate of all gay men at around half of what this survey finds, but even that is problematic.

The problem with surveys of the gay population is that being gay isn't like being black, it is something people can hide, and do. There are huge numbers of gay people in the country who are completely unconnected with the larger gay population. They may live in isolated locations, or simply live socially isolated lives.

Any study of the gay community goes to where the surveyors can get answers with a minimum amount of effort. And that means in the concentrated gay "ghettos" in the major urban areas. Here are some facts:

1. We simply don't know for sure how many gay men there are in the United States.
2. We are not likely to know for a very long time, if ever.
3. It is almost impossible to do a representative survey of the gay population, if not impossible.
4. What surveys we can do are all skewed toward one end of the lifestyle spectrum while entirely excluding those on the other end.

This doesn't mean the study is useless. Understanding the limitations of the study allows us to make reasonable conclusions, but what the mainstream media is reporting are unreasonable conclusions. The study shows that educational efforts directed toward young, sexually active, gay men in urban settings are not as successful as they should be.

If we assume that the study shows where new efforts might be necessary, then it fills its purpose. But what we can't do is jump to conclusions about the gay population as a whole. In other words the worst thing you can get out of the study is precisely what the major media outlets were reporting. That is not an indictment of the CDC but of the mainstream media in the United States.

Photo 1: those who got surveyd. Photo 2: those who didn't, to illustrate the point.

AIDS and the global warming connection.

There is a connection between AIDS and global warming that many people don’t quite understand.

Recently the United Nations AIDS agency is planning a big announcement this week. Basically they are saying that the AIDS epidemic has slowed down much more than they expected. But they also appear ready to reduce the official statistics regarding the number of world AIDS cases.

Previously they were saying that new HIV infections were increasing by approximately 4 million per year. The new numbers indicate that 2.5 million new infections are taking place instead. That is a decrease of 40% from what they claimed last year.

A year ago they estimated that 40 million people were infected globally. By today their estimate would have had the number at 44 million if their previous projections were correct. They now say that the total infections are 33 million. But the Washington Post notes that the critics of UN claims on AIDS are still unhappy. They believe the numbers are still being exaggerated. The Post reports:

Having millions fewer people with a lethal contagious disease is good news. Some researchers, however, contend that persistent overestimates in the widely quoted U.N. reports have long skewed funding decisions and obscured potential lessons about how to slow the spread of HIV. Critics have also said that U.N. officials overstated the extent of the epidemic to help gather political and financial support for combating AIDS. "There was a tendency toward alarmism, and that fit perhaps a certain fund-raising agenda," said Helen Epstein, author of "The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS." "I hope these new numbers will help refocus the response in a more pragmatic way."

Officials at the UN not only continued this alarmist campaign but escalated it. Dr. Peter Piot, head of UNAIDS, just last year warned the world that “the pandemic and its toll are outstripping the worst predictions.” The Post says this was in spite of “several years' worth of newer, more accurate studies already offered substantial evidence that the agency's tools for measuring and predicting the course of the epidemic were flawed.”

The UN officials had models which they designed to predict the future course of the epidemic. But such models rarely reflect reality. The knowledge to create a decent model is diffused around the world with far too many factors to be considered. At best the modelers can hope that they create something that is merely a very rough approximate of reality.

James Chin, formerly of the World Health Organization, says the estimates based on these models are probably still way off. The hacking off of 25% of the numbers isn’t enough. He thinks it ought to be reduced a further 25%, down to 25 million world wide. Chin, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley, explained the reason for this alarmism in an article he wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Without a constant flow of alarming news releases warning about HIV being on the brink of spreading into general populations, AIDS activists fear that the public and policy makers will not continue to give AIDS programs the highest priority -- hence these "glorious myths," lies told for a noble cause. This alarmism goes against all the evidence. Global and regional HIV rates have remained stable or have been decreasing during the past decade (except possibly among drug users in Eastern Europe). HIV has remained concentrated in groups with the riskiest behavior. Several decades of experience support the conclusion that HIV is incapable of epidemic spread among the vast majority of heterosexuals.

Chin believes the panic-mongering is distorting the response to AIDS and causing billions of dollars to be wasted in areas where it will have little impact. Only a realistic appraisal of the problem allows one to focus attention on the proper areas of concern. Chin says the numbers were inflated “in an effort to get more and more money.”

So why is this alarmism finally dying out? The AIDS numbers on the ground simply continue to fail to match the model. For a couple of decades the AIDS interest groups insisted the problem was far more pervasive and threatening than it really was. And they kept referring to their models and what they predicted would happen to scare up the resources they felt they needed to address the issue.

Having spent a large portion of the last few decades living in Africa I paid attention to the numbers and I could see problems. The population growth rates did not seem to reflect the death rates which we were supposed to be experiencing in Africa. That was something that I never saw addressed. There was also too much corruption of the local numbers. A batch of patients with TB were simply not as valuable to the government as if they were relabelled as AIDS patients. The amount of funds available to them to deal with AIDS was greater than the amount available for tuberculoses. Similarly I recently spoke to a friend in Africa who told of an orphanage that he knew of. They were having financial problems raising the funds necessary to care for the children they had. They allegedly changed their focus and told people they were helping “AIDS orphans” and found that the funds available to them increased dramatically.

There were just too many incentives in the political structure to label a death as AIDS related when it wasn’t. And that meant the models had been built on assumptions that were distorted by the incentives provided. Yet the modelers were attempting to do good. But one problem with focusing on problems is that by focusing on it you convince yourself that it is far worse than it really is. You read reports that verify what you already assume. And you write your report and throw it into the hopper with the others. Someone else comes along and analyzes the reports and announces that the consensus is that the world is facing an pandemic with mounting deaths. In fact AIDS deaths have been dropping and so have the infection rates. And it is only that reality that put the models into check.

Similar problems exist, I believe, with global warming theories. The assumed problems are based on projections from models, models that are flawed because no one on earth understands all the intricacies that create climate change. No model can accurately take these processes, be they anthropogenic or natural, in account.

The AIDS models were flawed and so were the numbers they produced. They had the material by which to prove them wrong -- that is they projected trends over the short term and the reality on the ground contradicted the trends they predicted. But this the problem with global warming models. They invariably predict the climate in a century. In other words it will take one hundreds years to prove them wrong. William Gray, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University, says of the global warming modelers:

...dare not make public short-period global temperature forecasts for next season, next year, or a few years hence. This is because they know they do not have short range forecast skill. They would lose credibility if they issue forecasts hat could actually be verified. These climate modelers live largely in a ‘virtual world’ of their own making where reality and model skill is determined largely by the modelers themselves.

There was a passionate, well-intentioned (for the most part) campaign to make people aware of the problems and dangers of AIDS. I too marched in AIDS candlelight vigils. I think now of some friends who died and others who are infected but apparently thriving. The AIDS quilt project had its offices between my home and my work and I would walk past it almost daily. AIDS was, and is, certainly real. That didn’t make the models about AIDS correct nor did it make the illness as threatening to the world as it was said to be. But it did threaten people and it still does. Only a realistic appraisal of the disease allows us to prevent it and alarmism is not conducive to clear thinking.

Global warming is intensely alarmist in nature. It has all the flaws that the AIDS alarmism had. And the short term data in recent years may be indicating that the models are wrong. My problem is that I have no confidence in the ability of fallible modelers to accumulate in one equation all the complex realities that determine climate trends. IPCC author Dr. John Christy explains it this way: “Mother Nature is incredibly complex, and to think we mortals are so clever and so perceptive that we can create computer code that accurately reproduces the millions of processes that determine climate is hubris (think of predicting the complexities of clouds).”

It was the discrepancy between the hard data and the models that were behind the revision of the alarmist statements about AIDS. I suspect that given enough time discrepancies between global warming models and hard data will do the same. I also think that those warming alarmists who are politically motivated know this. And that is one reason I suspect that they will get more extreme in their projections and hysteria. If they don’t scare the world into adopting their solutions now the data may finally put an end to their campaign. So I expect the shrill pronouncements to reach higher decibel levels the longer this discrepancy between data and projections continues.

What would seem persuasive to me, regarding such models, is models that are reasonably accurate over short and moderate periods of time. Surely these models can’t exist in a vacuum and have to be tested against the actual data. And if the data and the models don’t correspond it is the models that have to be thrown out -- and I dare say the policies that are built on those models as well.

Authoritarian intolerance on campus.

I don’t pretend to be a medical doctor or a biologist. So I have no position on whether HIV causes AIDS or not. But that is not important when it comes to whether or not such debate ought to be allowed.

In any area debate ought to be free. By free, I mean unhampered by government law or regulation. I do not mean that one must respect the opinions of others only respect their rights. Nor is one obligated to help them spread their ideas in any way. It is entirely one of negative obligations: that is one may NOT do things to them but there are no positive obligations to do things FOR them.

This is a foundation of classical liberal thinking. Anyone who helps, promotes or encourages the use of government sanction to punish an individual for expressing a peaceful opinion is not an advocate of human liberty.

Recently I watched the documentary, The Other Side of AIDS, which looked at this debate between respected researchers on both sides of the issue. But one man stood out. Not because of his research but because of his viciousness and authoritarianism. That was Dr. Mark Wainberg of the McGill University AIDS Center.

Wainberg is being interviewed about this debate and he immediately starts demanding to know whether or not the interviewer is a dissident or not. If a dissident then Wainberg will immediately cut off the discussion. He will refuse to answer questions. Worse yet he launches into demands that people who disagree with his view ought to be rounded up and arrested.

Wainberg asks the man if he believes HIV causes AIDS. The interviewer says that is the prevailing view. Wainberg then demands to know “Do you personally believe that HIV causes AIDS.” Now, I couldn’t answer that because I don’t know. I have no medical degree or the scientific knowledge necessary to judge the quality of research. But Wainberg sounded like a theologian, not a serious scientist. He wanted to root out heresy and damn the heretics to some undetermined penalty.

The researcher responds: “I don’t have enough information either way quite honestly.” That’s not good enough for the Grand Inquisitor. “Are you one of the dissidents?” he demands to know. The interviewer says he is not a dissident. This does not satisfy this theologian. “How can you say you don’t have enough information?” Maybe because he is not trained in the fields required for him to make such a judgement. What Cardinal Wainberg is demanding is not that the man make an informed judgement at all. He is demanding that the man agree with him. He is demanding that Wainberg’s view be accepted without evidence. Wainberg tells the man he should have had an opinion formed before doing the interview.

What it means is that Wainberg will only be interviewed by people who already agree with everything he is going to say. Why such a fear? Why such intolerance? Wainberg told the man that unless he already agreed with him he may want to edit his remarks to make him, Wainberg, look foolish. Why? Wainberg was already doing that all on his own.

Then Wainberg issued his fatwa against anyone who dared disagree with him. “Anyone, those who attempts to dispel the notion that HIV is the cause of AIDS are perpetrators of death. And I, would very much, for one, like to see the Constitution of the United States and similar countries have some means in place that we can charge people who are responsible for endangering public health with charges of endangerment and bring them up on trial. I think that people like Peter Duesberg belong in jail.”

“Someone who would perpetrate the notion that HIV is not the cause of AIDS is perhaps motivated by sentiment of pure evil. That such a person may perhaps really want millions of people in Africa, and elsewhere, to become infected by this virus and go on to die of it . Who knows maybe there is a hidden agenda behind the thoughts of a madman, maybe all psychopaths everywhere have ways of getting their views across that are sometimes camouflaged in subterfuge but I suggest to you that Peter Deusberg is probably the closest thing we have in this world to a scientific psychopath.”

Wainberg is seriously unhinged here and perhaps unfit to deal with students. What is really scary here is that at this moment I’m reading How the Idea of Religious Tolerance Came to the West by Perez Zagorin. He discusses the logic of those who burned heretics at the stake and their reasoning. They sound exactly like Wainberg right down to the accusation of the heretics being “pure evil.”

The interviewer made a mistake with this scientific mullah. The interviewer had seen that Wainberg’s irrational statements were all directed at Dr. Peter Deusberg alone. So he mentioned that there are other scientists who take the same position. The mere mention that numerous researchers disagree with this Mad Doctor of McGill was enough. Wainberg gives the man a dirty look and says: “And now this interview is over” and walks out.

My inclination is to go with the scientific consensus in most cases where I don’t think I can draw my own conclusion. But when I see people like Dr. Wainberg acting in such a way, and demanding that their views be legally protected from challenge, then I have to wonder if those who disagree don’t have a real case. This sort of intolerance is so often rooted in a fear that one may be wrong. It is ripe in theology but ought not exist in the academic world. Dr. Wainberg is an embarrassment to his profession and a man with such a passionate hatred for academic freedom that he ought not hold a position at a respected university. He may be right about the medical facts. But he shames his own position when he acts like an academic Stormtrooper. The world will never be a civilized place as long as men sit in university posts who want to imprison others over intellectual differences.