Reining in AIDS estimates

The BBC made my husband gnash his teeth a bit earlier this week. (This happens fairly frequently, actually.) He'd been listening to the BBC on NPR radio and he'd heard a story about the UN admitting that it had been off on the number of AIDS cases by millions and millions and millions of people. But, he said, the radio guys were spending their time commenting that perhaps Bush had been right for once. They seemed focused on the President Bush angle, when perhaps the real news was that the UN had once again been caught using bad figures to promote a cause and raise money and extend its reach. He wanted the news, and they got caught up in their sidebox commentary, and it was a bit frustrating.

Today I had time to follow up so I spent some time googling trying to find the story, but found it hadn't seemed to make much of a splash. Either that, or I was using the wrong search words. But then I went to Considerettes, and there it was, with a link to a Washington Post story from Tuesday. A page one story, no less. And hey, if you go all the way to the end of the article, it notes that variations in behavior are the biggest determining factors in how severe the HIV epidemic is from region to region and from group to group. News you can use, that is, even if it isn't politically correct.

The Washington Post article quotes two authors: James Chin, author of "The AIDS Pandemic: The Collision of Epidemiology With Political Correctness," and Helen Epstein, author of "The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS."