NotAIDS! Opinion
March 22, 2008

A comment on the press release, Poor Sanitation Threatens Public Health by the UN and WHO

Over the last two years, NotAIDS! has featured numerous articles on the twin health problems whose parent is poverty, malnutrition and sanitation.

The lack of adequate caloric and nutritional intake, and the basic lack of potable, parasite-free drinking water because of insufficient sanitation systems in Africa and in other areas of the world, such as India, China, and many developing nations, has more to do with immune deficiency everywhere than an engima called HIV.

Indeed, NotAIDS! has published vitriolic opinions against the policies and diatribe of the United Nations (UNAIDS, UN Health) and the World Health Organization (WHO) for their dogged misplacement of financial and political support of the behemoth that is the AIDS industry.

In editorial fairness, the wisdom in the press release republished here is lauded. Hopefully it signals a shift toward common sense dictating policy rather than meddling into people's sex lives or trying to circumsise the African continent.

For the past 25 years, a staggering amount of money has been contributed to pharmaceutical companies and public health bureacracies to fight a mysterious molecule that can't even survive the open air for longer than a few milliseconds, and can't be shown unequivocally to cause a broadly defined syndrome of immune deficiency, also known as AIDS.

No one would disagree that malnutrition and parasite-laden drinking water have been proven, and can be shown by any method, to in fact cause a such a syndrome, and that a downward spiral of ill-health can be reversed with a simple, cost-efficient prescription of nutrition and sanitation technologies well-known to the west.

Europe had such an epiphany regarding sewage treatment technology in the late-1800s, as John Snow relentlessly tried to convince a stubborn "public health" community that sanitation matters.

Paired with his assertion that the Broad Street pump in London was the culprit of waves of cholera death, Dr. Robert Koch's discovery of the comma-shaped cholera bacillus in 1876, and the spread of the waterborne disease to the rich neighborhoods of Europe led what is now called the "developed world" to the modern age.

Joining the voices of thousands around the planet, in news publishing, opinion blogging, healthcare, science, research, and biotechnology, this writer has made the case that monies and political will must be directed towards fighting poverty, and the consequent lifespan-limiting, health-debilitating problems of malnutrition and parasites caused by dirty water.

Money that goes to providing food, and to the provision of water treatment facilities, and other sanitation system technologies is money well spent because it is money that makes an immediate and lasting difference.

One can only imagine the improved lot of billions of our brothers and sisters around the world, if the tremendous influence of public figures like Bill Clinton and Bill Gates shifted the focus and the enormous weight of the Global Fund and of the Gates Foundation to the problems of hunger and unsafe, contaminated drinking water.

With slight shifts in policy, our thought leaders must act now to solve the twin problems borne of poverty disgracing the West and causing untold suffering to humanity.

Hunger and dirty water have no place in the modern world.

- The Editor

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