New Theory Blames HIV/AIDS on the Collapse of Socialism

Yasmin S. Portales Machado

HAVANA TIMES — Miguel Angel Ferrer published his theory about the cause of the spread of HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe: the fall of the Berlin Wall. He holds that “in the case of the part of Europe that was socialist, the explanation for the increasing presence of HIV and AIDS is (…) the collapse of their planned economies and social ownership of the means of production.”

This discovery was published in his blog maintained online by Venezuela’s TeleSur television network.

Ferrer is a Mexican professor of political economy and an analyst for several publications and radio programs. His blog entries focus on the politics of his nation, though nothing so far has identified him as a HIV/AIDS researcher or activist.

His post “El sida ayer y hoy” (AIDS: Yesterday and Today) has no date, but we can attribute it to the avalanche of information about World AIDS Day. After a brief review of the change in the impact of the disease, with the development of anti-retroviral therapies, Ferrer focuses on two regions: sub-Saharan Africa and the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe.

In the former case he attributes the advance of the disease to post-colonial underdevelopment, and, in the second, to the restoration of capitalism.

I should note that the blog doesn’t accept comments.

Luis Rondon Paz, a Cuban gay rights activist, published a response on his webpage Espacio Cr0 with his entry titled “So HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe is the Fault of Capitalists and Neo-Nazis?” This reply was posted on December 27 and is now the most visited post on the Proyecto Arcoiris website, where it was republished.

Rondon Paz challenges Ferrer’s “socio-economic” argument by saying that the key is in the “perception of risk that people have in the face of the AIDS epidemic,” which he accuses of being manipulated and concludes by citing Cuba and Brazil as examples of the fight against the pandemic.

Miguel Angel Ferrer published his theory about the cause of the spread of HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe: the fall of the Berlin Wall. He holds that “in the case of the part of Europe that was socialist, the explanation for the increasing presence of HIV and AIDS is the collapse of their planned economies and social ownership of the means of production.”

I don’t think that the model of struggle being waged by Cuba contradicts Miguel Angel Ferrer’s arguments. Eastern Europe is a social, epidemiological and political setting that’s very different from that faced by Cuba’s Ministry of Public Health, which is involved (through its budgetary allocations and its control of international resources) in all aspects of the pandemic – from clinical to cultural characteristics.

But the manipulation in the post “AIDS: Yesterday and Today” are flagrant:

First, life is presented in the former socialist as a paradise. Ferrer writes: “Those were austere but healthy economies, where life went on without major social contrasts, without opulence or misery, where all of their inhabitants were ensured a reasonably good level and quality of life.”

Abundant testimonies attest that the economies of the Soviet Union and its satellites were terribly poor, and the distribution of wealth was far from equitable, both regionally and between social strata maintained by the Stalinist bureaucracy.

Second, he distorts the major news item announced by UNAIDS in 2012. The agency’s annual report indicates that the end of the epidemic is possible, but the most striking result is that while AIDS has declined in Africa, where “a reduction of over 50 percent in cases of new HIV infections has been achieved,” though this is not the case with the rest of the world. Equating the conditions in Africa and Eastern Europe is necessary for Ferrer’s vain “anti-imperialist” argument, but it’s not true, not even superficially.

The third error Ferrer makes is assuming that the cause of the spread of HIV/AIDS is socioeconomic. Numerous studies have shown that the problem with this disease (and venereal diseases generally) are patriarchal models on which sexuality is usually modeled, systemic sexual violence, and the stigma associated with having an STD. Otherwise, the pandemic would have been stopped earlier in the First World.

With this third argument, Ferrer reminds me of African presidents Thabo Mbeki and Robert Mugabe, who have suggested that AIDS stems from poverty and not the HIV infection. Fortunately he doesn’t dare to deny the advances in its treatment!

Well, I guess this is why there’s freedom of speech, but sometimes it kills.
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Links (in Spanish):

El sida ayer y hoy

¿Así que el VIH/Sida en Europa del Este es culpa de capitalistas y neo-nazis?

¿Por qué el Sida retrocede en África y no en el resto del mundo?