peripheries

HIV Positive Children Discriminated against in School

There is a country where HIV-positive children are being turned away and excluded from primary and secondary schools.

Parents of children as young as four were told by head teachers that teachers, other parents, school personnel and even dinner ladies would have to be told of the children’s medical status.

Guess in what country this despicable discrimination is happening?

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The enduring myth of HIV not causing AIDS

More than 25 years into a pandemic that affects 33 millions people in 2007 and has caused the death of millions, the myth that HIV does not cause AIDS is still alive and strong.

More than 25 years and the same old myths are rehashed and the same old abuses of science are perpetuated all over the world and thanks to the Internet are accessible to everybody, most frighteningly in countries where the virus has already spread in large swaths of the populations at risk.

In India, for example, Mayank Tewari writer for DNA, rehashes Duesberg’s old contention “that it is AIDS drugs, such as AZT, that cause the disease owing to their high toxicity” and that Duesberg has the support of “David Rasnick, a prominent American biochemist, and Nobel laureate Kary Mullis, another American biochemist, and enjoys the support of South African President Thabo Mbeki.”

Mbeki who has picked out Msimang Tshabalala as South African Health Minister; Msimang, who recommends garlic and beetroot, rather than antiretrovirals for the treatment of AIDS. Mullis who also challenged global warming and the dammaging effects of CFC. Rasnick who conducted unethical clinicial trial with the Rath Foundation in Africa.

The problem is not that much that the “HIV does not cause AIDS” myth is supported by very little scientific evidence if any, and scientists with dubious conduct or ideas, but that their arguments are old and were put forward when little was known about the HIV virus (it was 20 years ago, in 1987, that Duesberg came up first with the idea that HIV is not the primary cause of AIDS). Old arguments and the support of prominent scientists are not a substitute for scientific proofs.

If there was a need for only one proof that HIV is the virus responsible of AIDS and that antiretrovirals are efficient medicines don’t look further than at children from Baan Gerda in the Thai country side, Children who now live a near normal life; children who have never come close to AZT or never lived the lifestyle (homosexuality) or had malnutrition problem or bad water that Duesberg said back in the 90s are responsible for AIDS. Children who now enjoy life thanks to antiretrovirals that are not supposed to be efficient against a virus not supposed to cause the disease they are not affected with.

Lord Kelvin may have had some reasons to believe that the Earth was 7000 years old back in the late 19^th century and he was certainly enjoying the support of many renowned fellow scientists. He was nevertheless wrong and has been proved so.

Unless one lives in the last century, and that is the 20^th century, one can’t really be taken seriously when saying that HIV does not cause AIDS.

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The unteachables: English pupils vs. lab’s marmosets

The front page of The Guardian online today runs a story about Chris Parry, the chief executive of the Independent Schools Council next to a series of articles about animal research and in particular the use of monkeys and apes in experiments aiming at understanding the basic neural architecture of primates (including human) so that treatments for brain diseases even become a possibility.

On the one hand when asked if he thought that some children in state schools were unteachable Chris Parry replied, “Yeah, I think there are contexts within which some children can’t be controlled.” On the other, Marmoset Anna has learned which shaped button to press to get a tasty sugary drink.

No conclusion should be hastily drawn here but some concerns are legitimate if Chris Parry’s prediction “that pupils will learn via Wikipedia-type programmes in class, with teachers helping them to apply the facts they build up online” becomes reality (emphasis mine).

If tomorrow’s education is based on Wikipedia, an amateur encyclopaedia built on consensual beliefs rather than established knowledge, we should definitively worry that tomorrow’s youth will get many tasty sugary drinks, without much understanding of where they come from.

The problem is not that much that Wikipedia flattens controversy and originality or has the “anybody can contribute” at the heart of its philosophy but that without any critical sense it is a dangerous approach and understanding of knowledge. Education should not only be about acquiring knowledge and applying it, but about developing a critical sense that allow the questioning of this knowledge. This can’t be learned online (unless one bothers reading the discussion page of a Wiki article) and this is what teaching should be about and teachers should be doing.

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