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UN Finally Admits Worldwide AIDS Epidemic Greatly Overestimated

UNAIDS estimates now much lower but AIDS scientist says new figures still too high

By Thaddeus M. Baklinski

NEW YORK, November 20, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - As reported by LifeSiteNews at the beginning of November, the number of AIDS cases worldwide has been grossly exaggerated by the UN Joint Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). This exaggeration was seen to benefit the massive AIDS industry's constant demands for large funds. See LifeSiteNews.com stories here: Scientists Acknowledge AIDS Crisis is Distorted and Overblown - Part I (http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/nov/07110101.html) and Part II (http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/nov/071102.html). Now the UN has been forced to admit there has been a major problem with its numbers.

On Tuesday, a UNAIDS annual report admitted that the world body has sharply reduced its estimates of the global HIV/AIDS pandemic because of strong evidence from AIDS scientists that the agency's methods for measuring and predicting the course of the epidemic were flawed.

Dr. James Chin, former head of a World Health Organization Global Programme on AIDS unit from 1987-1992 and Drs. Edward Green and Daniel Halperin, formerly with AIDS units of USAID, accumulated and publicised much of the evidence that eventually forced the UN to publicly admit the serious flaws with its AIDS numbers.

The Washinton Post reports that Dr. Chin has responded that the UN's revisions are still too high. Chin estimates the current number of AIDS cases worldwide to be 25 million whereas the new UN figures are 8 millon above that. Chin told the Post "If they're coming out with 33 million, they're getting closer. It's a little high, but it's not outrageous anymore".

Much of the reduction, says UNAIDS, is due to revised information from India, where the numbers have been cut in half from six million cases to about three million, and from new data from several countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

The agency's former estimates were based on studies of HIV infection rates of women receiving prenatal care rather than populations as a whole. New studies relying on random, census-style sampling techniques observed consistently lower infection rates.

The AIDS experts critical of the UN emphasised that dramatically lower rates of infection in African countries such as Kenya and Uganda can be attributed to sexual behavior differences "which are the biggest factors determining the severity of the AIDS epidemic in different countries and even within countries." Significantly, these African countries have strong support for abstinence education, whereas countries in the "hot spot" of African AIDS concentration, such as Swaziland and Botswana, consistently promote condom use.

The UN AIDS agency and other members of the AIDS industry have often ridiculed and aggressively targeted those who emphasised abstinence programs over failed and very costly condom distribution campaigns.

AIDS researchers have stated that AIDS has become a "Billion Dollar Industry" that stands to profit from misinformation. Inflated AIDS numbers were used to distort information in order to gain political and financial support for AIDS progammes.

Helen Epstein, author of a recent book on the AIDS fight, told the Washington Post that within the UN, "There was a tendency toward alarmism, and that fit perhaps a certain fundraising agenda".

The now far more realistic findings may cause spending for AIDS research and treatment to be reduced and at the same time possibly lead the UN to accept the overwhelming evidence that abstinence programs will save far more lives than massive condom distribution and harmful sex-ed programs.

Related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Kenya First Lady: Condom "is causing the spread of AIDS in this country."
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/may/06052307.html

Ugandan AIDS Activist's Facts Trounce UN Official Claim that Catholic Church to Blame for AIDS Crisis
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/oct/07102507.html

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