peripheries

Conspiracy too, kills

September 4th, 2008 | by Admin |

The 21st century AIDS epidemics in the US is young, Black and gay. This was one of the major outcome of the 2008 AIDS conference. Several reasons have been advanced to explain why this particular population has been and is more at risk of infection. One that has received little attention so far was explored several years ago. In 2005 Laura Bogart and Sheryl Thorburn conducted a telephone survey to assess the relation between the endorsement of HIV/AIDS conspiracy beliefs and condom attitudes amongst African Americans (J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr. 2005, 38(2):213-8).

Out of the 500 respondents to their survey, a significant proportion endorsed HIV/AIDS conspiracy beliefs. The beliefs were significantly stronger amongst men than women and were significantly associated with more negative attitudes and inconsistent use of condoms.

Suspicions about health information and condoms provided by Public health services may be rooted in the mistrust of government in general. Previous studies have shown that the belief in conspiracy theories could be tracked far back in time (Ann Epidemiol. 1993, 3(2):193-5.) and were prevalent amongst Africans Americans but not White men (J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr. 2006, 3:342-4). These beliefs create a barriers to HIV prevention interventions and translate into more negative attitudes towards condoms use, HIV testing and treatment uptake.

Though not without limitation, a more recent research work conducted in South Africa, Bogart and colleagues observed that only age and genocidal beliefs about HIV were significant predictors of having been tested for HIV. Amongst various genocidal beliefs, only the genocidal belief that “AIDS was introduced by White people as a way to control Black Africans” was significantly associated with not being tested for HIV (J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr. 2008, 49(1):115-6).

In both studies the role of the government is fundamental in creating or fostering conspiracy or genocidal beliefs. The US has blatantly ignored the AIDS epidemic amongst it African American community and in South Africa, Thabo Mbeki and Manto Tshabalala Msimang’s fretting with AIDS denialists and inconsistent messages about the cause of AIDS have sent all the wrong signals.

These studies have clear implications for prevention interventions:

“Based on the large number of individuals who endorsed HIV/AIDS conspiracy beliefs [...], it is important for researchers and practitioners to integrate such beliefs into safer sex education message targeting Africans Americans, especially Black men” and crucially, “to obtain the trust of back community, governments and public health entities need to acknowledge the origin of conspiracy belief openly in the context of historical discrimination [...]” in the US and get their facts right in South Africa.

Now any good conspiracy theorist will have noticed that Laura M. Bogart, PhD is an employee of the RAND Corporation, a global policy think tank set up in 1946 by the United States Army Air Forces and often at the heart of many conspiracy theories. For them, these studies would only be another proof that that White people are conspiring against Black people.

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