How Africa’s one AIDS success story, Uganda, became a disaster when Christianity trumped science.
From The American Prospect:
Even in an administration famous for its contempt for science, the President’s tortured case for abstinence stands out. He committed $1 billion to abstinence-only programs abroad without a shred of scientific evidence that they prevent disease. Casting about for justification, he and the virginity advocates who surround him latched on to one of the developing world’s rare AIDS success stories: Uganda. In their fertile imaginations, the East African nation was a fairy-tale place where Christian morality had turned the epidemic around.But their castle in the sky came crashing down in May, on the eve of a United Nations meeting on AIDS, when Uganda’s AIDS commissioner announced that after years of decline, new HIV infections had almost doubled from 70,000 in 2003 to 130,000 in 2005. Devastating news. [read it all here... reg req'd]
Bill McCartney
