Blue Crab Boulevard

Another Day Another UN Fraud

The United Nations will be issuing new AIDS estimates - they will be revised sharply downward. UNAIDS has long been the target of researchers who have consistently found substantially lower rates of AIDS infection than the UN kept reporting. How much lower will the figures be? How about 40% lower. Why were the numbers so wrong for so long? Promoting hysteria to gain extra funding.

The latest estimates, due to be released publicly Tuesday, put the number of annual new HIV infections at 2.5 million, a cut of more than 40 percent from last year's estimate, documents show. The worldwide total of people infected with HIV — estimated a year ago at nearly 40 million and rising — now will be reported as 33 million.

Having millions fewer people with a lethal contagious disease is good news. Some researchers, however, contend that persistent overestimates in the widely quoted U.N. reports have long skewed funding decisions and obscured potential lessons about how to slow the spread of HIV. Critics have also said that U.N. officials overstated the extent of the epidemic to help gather political and financial support for combating AIDS.

"There was a tendency toward alarmism, and that fit perhaps a certain fundraising agenda," said Helen Epstein, author of "The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS." "I hope these new numbers will help refocus the response in a more pragmatic way."

The man in charge of UNAIDS has a history of writing prefaces to the reports that should sound a bit familiar:

For years, UNAIDS reports have portrayed an epidemic that threatened to burst beyond its epicenter in southern Africa to generate widespread illness and death in other countries. In China alone, one report warned, there would be 10 million infections — up from 1 million in 2002 — by the end of the decade.

Piot often wrote personal prefaces to those reports warning of the dangers of inaction, saying in 2006 that "the pandemic and its toll are outstripping the worst predictions."

Sounds rather like some other warnings issued by UN bodies, doesn't it? One researcher quoted in the report says that the UN's revision downward is still much to high and that the number of AIDS cases worldwide is much lower. The UN has proven inept, crooked or wrong repeatedly. Why do people still trust then on any subject at all?

Medicine, World news | Gaius Tuesday, 20 November , 2007

By quilly mammoth, Tuesday, 20 November , 2007 @ 10:05 am

You mean they put out false reports to garner funding by creating a crisis? Oh…we’re talking about AIDS and not the recent climatology study on Global Climate Change they just ranted about.
By martian, Tuesday, 20 November , 2007 @ 12:29 pm

Why do people still trust then on any subject at all? Reasonable people don’t and haven’t for some time. The UN consists of a group of un-elected elites who represent only themselves and their own continued income.
By NortonPete, Tuesday, 20 November , 2007 @ 1:01 pm

I recall a person, who I thought was a bit of a paranoid, saying that the UN would find a way to tax the world. Hmmmm, I see global carbon tax. Perhaps being a bit paranoid is a good thing.
By Gaius, Tuesday, 20 November , 2007 @ 1:25 pm

Being paranoid does not mean they are not out to get you…
By terrence, Tuesday, 20 November , 2007 @ 1:40 pm

But, the UN MEANS WELL. Is that not all that matters?

Just because the facts MAY be wrong does not mean the narrative is! Think of the children! The UN is trying to save the planet for the children! Can’t you see that? /sarcasm off