African HIV Myths

HIV/AIDS Is Bad in Africa Because Africans are Hypersexual

There is no evidence to support the claim that African sexual practices are any more deviant or abnormal than any other group of people. This well worn and rather tired stereotype resides in the Anglo-American imagery of African sexuality more than anything else. Many factors fuel the pandemic in this region, including poverty, lack of adequate health-care infrastructure, the failure of the international community to react in a timely manner to the pandemic and lack of political will. In addition, HIV 1 subtype C is the most prevalent strain of the HI virus in this region, which in itself is responsible for half of infections worldwide. There is evidence to support the claim that this strain is much more efficiently transmitted through heterosexual sex. Thus, myriad social, economic, political and biomedical factors contribute to the severity of the pandemic in this region.

HIV Was Invented to Get Rid of Black People and Homosexuals

The idea that HIV was invented by humans deliberately, to get rid of black people and homosexuals, is widely regarded as a conspiracy theory. The evidence to support this claim is tenuous at the best and people who believe it disregard the evidence of the similarities between Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) that occurs in apes and HIV, as well as the fact that the first cases of HIV have been traced back to 1959, a time when the technology was simply not available to engineer HIV. The most credible origin theory is that SIV jumped species from chimpanzees being hunted and killed, either through being eaten or blood transference through cuts and wounds sustained by hunters. In some cases the hunters would have been able to fight off SIV, but in others it would have mutated into a specific strain of HIV. See http://www.avert.org for more details.