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Blog: Science UN Admits to Long-term Alarmism over AIDS Epidemic
Michael Asher (Blog) - November 20, 2007 11:50 AM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 94 comment(s) - last by dever.. on Dec 6 at 3:41 PM
Will the UN's scenario for AIDS repeat for global warming reports?

A new report from the United Nations acknowledges the agency has routinely overstated both the size and growth rate of the AIDS epidemic.  The new figures reduce the number of worldwide AIDS cases from 40 to 33 million, cuts the number of new cases by 40%, and reveal that the rate of new cases has been, contrary to past reports, slowing for many years. 

The pattern of exaggeration may date back as far as 1995, the year UNAIDS was founded.  Just last year, the UN reported infections were rising faster than "even our worst estimates," and warned of the "dangers of inaction."  

Critics have long maintained the U.N. overstated cases to gain political and financial support.  "There was a tendency toward alarmism, and that fit perhaps a certain fundraising agenda" said author and AIDS expert Helen Epstein.  James Chin, a former AIDS researcher for the World Heath Organiztion, says even these revisions are higher than the actual number of worlwide cases, which he estimates at 25 million.

In the past ten years, spending on AIDS has grown by 3,000 percent, topping $10B a year, much of that funding going to the UN itself.  But reports commissioned by private governments continued to contradict the official UN stance.  One study in India revealed cases less than half the official figure, and a another China study showed growth of new cases may have been overstated by as much as a factor of 10.

The scandal is eerily similar to the current state of the UN IPCC climate reports, where outside researchers (and even some IPCC panel members) have criticized the official reports as exaggerated and unrealistic. 

Climatologist and IPCC expert reviewer Vincent Gray has called the IPCC process "fundamentally corrupt" and its predictions a fraud.  Dr. Madhav Khandekar, another IPCC expert reviewer, has called the review process scientifically unsound, and notes the latest report fails to acknowledge a growing number of scientists now question the theory of greenhouse gas-based climate change.

Is there a linkage between the UN's handling of AIDS and global warming? According to journalist Claudia Rosett, the UN routinely overstates crises to generate funding, then uses it to fund a massive system of kickbacks, payoffs, and lavish expense accounts.   According to Rosett, IPCC climate pronouncements are just part of this long-standing pattern.

Rosett says the world should take a long, hard look at what the UN has become. 

UN officials in Geneva declined comment.

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Don't Particularly Like...
By gradoman on 11/20/2007 1:35:02 PM , Rating: 5
...how you put AIDS and Global Warming in the same sentence there.

AIDS is killing people and continues to afflict us. That's not so abstract like the big Global Warming is. The figures may be off and people are getting fat off of kickbacks, but that doesn't diminish the fact that it is a major issue.




RE: Don't Particularly Like...
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 11/20/2007 1:42:35 PM , Rating: 2
Why not? The U.N. is just drumming up hype for support. First AIDS, then Global Warming. Whats next? The point is that the U.N. can't be trusted, that they are as corrupt as everyday politicians and what they say should be taken with a very hefty grain of salt. Spreading FUD is what the U.N. is doing right now and it shows. Frankly I'd like nothing better than the kick the U.N. out of the U.S. and tell them to set up shop somewhere else. The U.N. ranks as "basically worthless", what they are now, and what they were originally setup to be are completely different. I'll bet allied leaders from WW2 are rolling in their graves over what the U.N. has become.


RE: Don't Particularly Like...
By OrSin on 11/20/07, Rating: -1
RE: Don't Particularly Like...
By Zurtex on 11/20/2007 2:03:58 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah, honestly, it's terrible they're drumming up hype for something which will affect and kill many poor people. Pfft, 33 million, wow, that's like 0.485% of the worlds population why should we care?

Sure without them, we'd have no serious international organization to actually get countries to commit any money at all to disaster relief (because even when they do commit they often skimp out and it takes the U.N effort to actually get countries often to pay even half of what they say they will). But hey, it's all like global warming, a conspiracy, but the conspiracy that poor people have the same value to their life as rich people.


RE: Don't Particularly Like...
By masher2 (blog) on 11/20/2007 2:15:01 PM , Rating: 4
> "Without them, we'd have no serious international organization to actually get countries to commit any money at all to disaster relief "

Interesting you mention disaster relief, as Rosett focuses much of her writing specifically on it. In the case of the 2004 Asian tsunami strike, for instance, dozens of nations instantly committed large sums to the effort.

The UN stepped in and insisted it be the sole distributor of those funds. A year later, it was discovered the agency had spent the majority of contributions on lavish travel fees and expense accounts.

Would the victims have been better off with private charities and governments handling those funds, rather than the UN? Most definitely so.


RE: Don't Particularly Like...
By Nacho on 11/20/2007 5:03:56 PM , Rating: 4
Sources please...


RE: Don't Particularly Like...
By masher2 (blog) on 11/20/2007 5:36:38 PM , Rating: 6
Rosett has an entire book on the subject. For an online reference, start with this Financial Times investigation, which found ~ a third of all tsunami relief funds spent on overhead, with the true figure impossible to determine, as many UN agencies refuse to disclose expenditures:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c32c8072-731e-11da-8b42-...

According to this FT story, the UN "pledges an investigation" into mishanding of tsunami relief funds. As is so common with the UN, that promise went nowhere:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/85bad830-6440-11d9-bd01-...


RE: Don't Particularly Like...
By Spartan Niner on 11/20/2007 6:42:21 PM , Rating: 4
In a somewhat related topic (global poverty), the amount of US Gov't donations towards combating poverty are a mere third of US private donations as per Andrew I. Cohen's article "Famine Relief and Human Virtue" in Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics (Eds. Christopher Heath Wellman and Andrew I. Cohen).

In the virtue ethics school of thought (espoused by Cohen and others) we must ask questions such as:

"Where does my money go?"
"How much of my money actually helps the people it's intended to help? 80%? 50%?"
"Is this the most effective use of my money?"

in addition to more troubling questions such as:

"In the grand scheme of things, will contributions merely lead to dependence on foreign aid rather than the necessary changes to prevent starvation?"
"What are the real causes of world poverty?"

Organizations such as UNICEF have a very good record of effective aid and efficiency. However, some people, especially from a libertarian (that's with a little l) viewpoint would argue that membership and participation in organizations such as the UN erode the member nations' sovereignty and merely create another layer of bureaucracy.

On the opposite end of the spectrum you have people such as Peter Singer who advocate mandatory giving as a moral obligation.


By Master Kenobi (blog) on 11/20/2007 6:46:30 PM , Rating: 5
It should be the objective of the aid programs to turn them around and get them back on their feet, not have them forever dependent on foreign aid. Just my opinion on the matter. That's why I'm a big fan of what the Gates Foundation does. They seem to have a clearly defined goal rather than throwing money at problems.


RE: Don't Particularly Like...
By dever on 12/6/2007 3:41:47 PM , Rating: 2
An additional danger of govt donations is that people may feel that any given problem is already taken care of since their tax dollars are supposedly used to fight it. This may reduce the natural tendency of the private sector to give to charities, fostering a sort of "not my problem" mentality. [I feel that it goes hand-in-hand with the dependency mentality and "rights to other people's money" attitude produced by the same govt policies.]

Not only that, but as mentioned already, funds are more efficiently distributed through the private sector, and that distribution directly reflects public sentiment (rather than a few politicians' or lobbiests' sentiments).


RE: Don't Particularly Like...
By Zurtex on 11/20/2007 8:02:43 PM , Rating: 1
I don't know about the U.S, but the U.K isn't even closing to paying on its commitments for such a disaster. So why you think that individual governments acting in a random fashion, occasionally giving money and with no organization of where to spend the money and how best to help, would be bester, I have no idea...

Private charities are just an excuse for governments who aren't doing their jobs, with the odd notable exceptions of the Red Cross, Amnesty International etc..


RE: Don't Particularly Like...
By Zurtex on 11/20/2007 8:09:23 PM , Rating: 2
To add on to what I said, I'm not sure about particular incidents you bring up. But often with disaster relief when governments send aide on their own, it tends to be somewhat haphazard and not nearly as much as it could. Governments tend also to spend very little of what the commit.

While I think charities like the Red Cross can help, particularly because the need to remain government neutral. It's just a poor excuse to get the middle classes and the rich to pay what they already should be doing in taxes by guilt tripping them.

Why should a crisis be media popular to get money payed on it? (i.e the amount a charity will get based on how much publicity it gets). Saving peoples lives on how well it plays in the headlines seems pretty inhumane to me.


RE: Don't Particularly Like...
By mdogs444 on 11/20/07, Rating: -1
RE: Don't Particularly Like...
By Keeir on 11/20/2007 10:40:30 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
While I think charities like the Red Cross can help, particularly because the need to remain government neutral. It's just a poor excuse to get the middle classes and the rich to pay what they already should be doing in taxes by guilt tripping them.


From this and your earlier post, you seem to indicate that a government has the responsibility to be "charitable" to its citizens and all humans around the world (at the foot at the wealthier minority).

I would strongly disagree with the statement that its any governments responsibility to be "charitable" or altruistic to the citizens of another nation. A government should always attempt act in the best interests of its citizens. This is rarely ever apparent in cases of "charity" giving such as the Tsunami in South East Asia...

Is it any surprise that many governments are choosing now to spend the money they pledged in charity on projects that directly affect their own citizens? The leaders are no dummies! They know that giving 100 million to Indonesia won't buy as many votes as pumping a 100 million into pork projects.. and this will be true no matter how much people are taxed and the government has to spend.

I for one am glad we have private charities and would say the government only needs to step in when private citizens and private charities have failed.


RE: Don't Particularly Like...
By Zurtex on 11/21/2007 2:01:17 PM , Rating: 2
I do and I disagree in principle with what you say and the pragmatics of how it actually works. I think a lot of the countries who are so lucky to be wealthy, often because they've got there off the back of the poor, have a responsibility to help the less fortunate in the world out.

I don't really have the time or effort to bring up real world examples and argue over them in such detail on this comment page. But clearly this is a fundamental disagreement you and I have, so it's not like we're going to convince each other of the other is right anyway.


RE: Don't Particularly Like...
By zombiexl on 11/25/2007 10:58:31 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
While I think charities like the Red Cross can help, particularly because the need to remain government neutral. It's just a poor excuse to get the middle classes and the rich to pay what they already should be doing in taxes by guilt tripping them.


So you believe the more you make the higher percentage of your income belongs to the government. That theory is flawed in so many ways. Eventually you end up with a similar income for doing far more work, either by putting in more time on the job, working on higher level degrees or just being more abmitious than others. Hell if we could all bring home the same money everyone would still be flipping burgers.

Realize that people work hard and deserve what they take home. In fact many people deserve to bring home more than they do. All the poor help tax codes help some people get a tax return for far more than they paid in taxes.


RE: Don't Particularly Like...
By BMFPitt on 11/26/2007 1:22:20 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Eventually you end up with a similar income for doing far more work, either by putting in more time on the job, working on higher level degrees or just being more abmitious than others.
You fail at math. But just for fun, I invite you to give me an example of 2 people's take-home pay where the only difference is AGI and show where this is true.

quote:
Hell if we could all bring home the same money everyone would still be flipping burgers.
So your dream job is to flip burgers? Well that certainly makes me want to listen to your opinion on the economy.


RE: Don't Particularly Like...
By Keeir on 11/26/2007 7:08:55 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
So your dream job is to flip burgers? Well that certainly makes me want to listen to your opinion on the economy.


I think you are taking the person too literially. The standard human response is to maximize benifits while minimizing effort. If people can't maximize a benifit, all thats left is to minimize effort. Thus, any job which doesn't require an education or thinking or responsibility will generally be preferred by the "masses" over jobs with hard work and lots of training required... Although there are other "benifits" than money, money has had a fairly broad appeal for centuries.

I think the real problem is that the US spends alot of money taxing people (and enforcing the taxation) to provide social nets that may not be needed if we just didn't tax the people so much in the first place. IE, many of the people that can't "afford" health care -might- be better served by not being taxed at all and buying private health-care rather than the US government increasing taxes to provide public healthcare. We do need to fix the loop-holes that all