Duesberg Hypothesis - AIDS in Africa

AIDS in Africa

According to the Duesberg hypothesis, AIDS is not found in Africa. What Duesberg calls "the myth of an African AIDS epidemic," among people" exists for several reasons, including:

• The need, according to Duesberg, of the CDC, the WHO, and other health organizations to justify their existences, resulting in their "manufacturing contagious plagues out of noninfectious medical conditions."
• Media sensationalism, with stories that "helped shape the Western impression of an AIDS problem out of control," resulting in high levels of funding.
• Willing participation in deception by local doctors who wish to take advantage of this aid money: "African doctors themselves participate in building the myth of the AIDS pandemic."
• Confusion or incompetence on the part of African doctors: "Many common Third World diseases are confused with AIDS even if they are not part of its official definition."

Duesberg states that African AIDS cases are "a collection of long-established, indigenous diseases, such as chronic fevers, weight loss, alias “slim disease”, diarrhea and tuberculosis" that result from malnutrition and poor sanitation. African AIDS cases, though, have increased in the last three decades as HIV's prevalence has increased but as malnutrition percentages and poor sanitation have declined in many African regions. In addition, while HIV and AIDS are more prevalent in urban than in rural settings in Africa, malnutrition and poor sanitation are found more commonly in rural than in urban settings.

According to Duesberg, common diseases are easily misdiagnosed as AIDS in Africa because "the diagnosis of African AIDS is arbitrary" and does not include HIV testing. A definition of AIDS agreed upon in 1985 by the World Health Organization in Bangui did not require a positive HIV test, but since 1985, many African countries have added positive HIV tests to the Bangui criteria for AIDS or changed their definitions to match those of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. One of the reasons for using more HIV tests despite their expense is that, rather than overestimating AIDS as Duesberg suggests, the Bangui definition alone excluded nearly half of African AIDS patients."

Duesberg notes that diseases associated with AIDS differ between African and Western populations, concluding that the causes of immunodeficiency must be different. Tuberculosis is much more commonly diagnosed among AIDS patients in Africa than in Western countries, while PCP conforms to the opposite pattern. Tuberculosis, though, had higher prevalence in Africa than in the West before the spread of HIV. In Africa and the United States, HIV has spurred a similar percentage increase in tuberculosis cases. PCP may be underestimated in Africa: since machinery "required for accurate testing is relatively rare in many resource-poor areas, including large parts of Africa, PCP is likely to be underdiagnosed in Africa. Consistent with this hypothesis, studies that report the highest rates of PCP in Africa are those that use the most advanced diagnostic methods" Duesberg also claims that Kaposi's Sarcoma is "exclusively diagnosed in male homosexual risk groups using nitrite inhalants and other psychoactive drugs as aphrodisiacs", but the cancer is fairly common among heterosexuals in some parts of Africa, and is found in heterosexuals in the United States as well.

Because reported AIDS cases in Africa and other parts of the developing world include a larger proportion of people who do not belong to Duesberg's preferred risk groups of drug addicts and male homosexuals, Duesberg writes on his website that "There are no risk groups in Africa, like drug addicts and homosexuals," However, many studies have addressed the issue of risk groups in Africa and concluded that the risk of AIDS is not equally distributed. In addition, AIDS in Africa largely kills sexually active working-age adults.