HIV treatment misguided worldwide

2.5 million people will contract HIV this year, a disease that is “preventable” according to Elizabeth Pisani, author of “The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS” at a discussion of her book at the Center For Strategic and International Studies today.

Pisani disagrees with the idea that AIDS is a worldwide problem saying, “There is no global HIV epidemic.” She said that parts of Africa, or 10 percent of the world’s population, have 66 percent (40 million people) of reported cases of HIV. She said that the rest of the HIV epidemic is prevalent in people who “sell sex,” gay men, and drug injectors.

She focused on the multitude of interest groups that will not help in the fight to prevent HIV. She said those in the UN will lose money, politicians will lose votes, religious groups will “compromise their morality,” and AIDS activists do not want to bring this problem back to its “bad days.”

Pisani added that the religious “sacred cows” against prevention of HIV are miscalculated. She said the feeling among the religious that providing condoms is a way of promoting sex is misguided. She said, in her experience, carrying condoms “doesn’t make it any easier to get laid.” She also said that the notion that providing needles promotes injection is untrue as well.

In the U.S. , Pisani said that HIV is “a gay male disease.” She said that prevention in America must be focused on that group.

In regards to to treatment of HIV, Pisani stated that she supported treatment, but “We can’t do it without doing better at prevention.”