Okay, admittedly, that’s kind of a misnomer. There isn’t one. At least not one that presently shows any real reason to believe it would work. In order to truly end the threat of AIDS as a widespread pandemic both in Africa and the rest of the world, we need to do three things:
 
1. Make people aware of the fact that condoms are just good.

Okay, it’s really just one thing. I admit it, but bullet points usually look nicer if you have three or more things in the list. In order to make that one point stick, we need to do three things:
 
1. Slap the mouth of any religious zealot who insists that condoms promote AIDS, that God hates you if you have sex, or that condoms are not a viable preventative for AIDS transmission.

Again, the bullet point list with only one bullet. It’s a sign of lazy writing, isn’t it?

The truth is, there’s a lot more at play here. First, we need to teach people the importance of family planning. This is a necessity the world over and for far more massive reasons than simple AIDS prevention. Our population continues to grow at an absolutely sickening rate, and all the talk of sustainability is foolish in the face of it. It isn’t shoveling during a blizzard, it’s like bailing water from a boat because you pulled the cork out of the bottom to stop up your bottle of wine. The population simply cannot continue to grow at the rate it is growing. This is why I’m really hesitant about the field of gerontology, I’m really not certain that ending age-related disease is a viable option until we have a handle on our ridiculous population growth.

What I’ve written here is mostly a pipe dream. There are too many agencies like the Catholic Church directly working on the ground to ensure that condoms are the enemy in poor countries where AIDS is spreading like wildfire (I can only assume this is because priests hate the reduced stimulation of condoms) and there is too little education reaching the people who need it most. And there are too many stops to the education, such as when agencies that promote condom use suddenly don’t qualify for funding from the American government out of violation of their No Sperm Left Behind policy. Until we can clamp a lid on the religious nuts, we’re stuck with the crisis.

The other side of the coin is the lack of effective medical help in developing countries. That’s not to say there are not doctors in Africa, but that the number of health care centers is impossibly few, and the quality of those centers is simply not there. In an article on Neurologica blog entitled Using Traditional Healers To Treat AIDS in Africa by Steven Novella, it is explained that the WHO is looking to attempt to use the existing network of healers. This causes me the fears. Steven puts it extremely well:
 
  Treating HIV is very challenging, and it is also a recent plague on humanity. It seems very unlikely that any traditionally used herb would be safe and effective against HIV. Despite the low probability, it is reasonable to test candidate herbs (as long as it is done ethically) but only well-controlled studies should be performed.

The trouble is, we simply don’t have a hell of a lot of options. There are, according to the Join(RED) campaign, 22 million people in Africa have HIV. That number, for want of a better term, is fucking scary. It’s no longer a question of waiting for some Daddy Warbucks to shell out the billions of dollars necessary to fix the problem. We simply do not have the resources to create enough properly staffed hospitals to deal with that kind of demand.

So I guess I agree with Steven, though it is a grudging agreement (and I get the impression, it’s a grudging agreement on his end too) that this is a necessary stopgap. We need first and foremost to use whatever resources we can to get this fire under control. But it really is a frightening prospect. HIV won’t be beaten by witch doctors and homeopaths. But perhaps the WHO can use this crisis as an opportunity to spread the importance of legitimate science-based medicine through what is ultimately a trusted network of medicine men.

Whenever I think of people networks, I think of Amway. I can’t help it, they’re just such an effective (and totally useless) people network. Imagine, however, if instead of selling soap and promising caviarre dreams, the WHO were able to implement a network of front-line health workers, people who would receive the necessary training to handle the immediate problem of treating the sick, reducing suffering, and prolonging life. Who knows where that could lead? If the traditional healers were utilized properly, we might even be able to open new doors for and through them for medical interventions. But again, this is more pipe dreaming.

There are two potentially bad outcomes to this WHO plan as I see it; it can either fail miserably through resistance by the wizards or it can succeed admirably and cloud the picture of HIV/AIDS treatment. I do consider it a terrible threat that any benefits of western medicine could be co-opted by the CAM folks and the shaman (is it shamen? shamans? shamii?) as proof of the miraculous powers of their snake oil. And I suppose the third bad outcome is the creation of a controlled economy of healing. The local medicine man doesn’t necessarily maintain the same oaths as a western doctor, and we could be creating an environment of drug trafficking and the abuse of power.

But something has to change, and until we can spread the right message to the masses, we’re stuck treating the wounded, and this might well be the best bet towards solving the problem.

Jim