this article in the Guardian yesterday on the subject of Thabo Mbeki and Aids:

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/aids/story/0,,1853794,00.html

This article describes how the problem of Aids in South Africa should be understood in the black and white terms of the administration of anti-retroviral drugs. I can’t resist a digression on the absurdity of this name for a drug; I mean does anyone really know what a retro-virus is? Isn’t it just another way of propagating the myth of the superiority of intellect of the technocratic elite? Anyway, that aside, this boils down to suggesting that the solution, a la W.H.O., is to dose the masses of the rapidly expanding population with AZT [don’t ask!- just makes me think of ZZ TOP]. Now when this drug was first ‘discovered’ through some incredibly tortuous and long-winded and expensive process to do with herring sperm [that’s right!], some of the first lucky patients to receive this drug reported that it seemed to be basically burning them up on the inside, which is technically speaking roughly what it does - not so much an elixir of immortality as the article suggests, but reducing them to a state of sterile inertia which probably extends their lives by a few years.

This is the cure we are all supposed to hail as the ultimate goal of our benevolent health directives for the stupid blacks who cannot understand their own problems. Give me garlic and lemon juice any day thanks very much! And that’s without going into the heated debate about the patenting of ‘anti-retrovirals’ through the WTO and the collusion of the forces of globalisation which, to the initiated, do not have much to do with compassion for the suffering of South Africans.

Which brings me to the more salient topic of what actually is HIV/AIDS and why are so many people in S. Africa dying from what appears to be a recognisable syndrome. Without getting into the nitty gritty of how the definition of a disease and conceptions of health are a major factor in the perception of solutions and therefore of the problems, I want to raise one issue or concept in relation to Aids. In a book called ‘The hidden connections’, by Fritjof Capra, a work which could be said to represent the cutting edge of western theoretical biology, he mentions that he does not believe in a ‘vital force’ in nature, [surprising considering his rise to fame as the author of The Tao of physics]. On the other hand we have the concept that Aids is a disease which is defined by the concept that it is the breakdown of the vital function of the immune system.

I don’t think it would be considered extreme to suggest that the concept of an immune system is analogous, or is perhaps the converse, of the idea of a regulating biological force which promotes the health of the individual. The two concepts have the same function; the one to prevent disease, the other to promote health. Therein lies a useful distinction between the paradigm of the WHO in reductivist allopathy and the more eastern approach of Ayurveda which conceives of health as a component of its environment.

To cut a long story short, I feel that this understanding of the role of a holistic paradigm in the promotion of health is the key to understanding this rift between the WHO faction and the more traditional theory of the Mbeki government. It is the purpose of the WHO to control and dominate, in league with other globalising forces, all aspects of world culture, which is, to most sane people, an emotionally regressive agenda. Conversely anyone who lives in South Africa and who has an interest in preserving its unique culture, even amidst its convoluted history and appalling economic circumstances, will, like Mbeki, feel the truth that Aids is a result not only of the promiscuity and western liberalisation rife in a country ravaged by corruption, but, more pointedly, of the profoundly invasive policies of a fatally flawed system of western ‘disease’ immunisation. [see ‘Limits to Medicine’ by Ivan Illich]