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How the West Sparked the AIDS Epidemic and How the World Can Finally Overcome It
Penguin Press
March 2012
On Sale: March 1, 2012
432 pages ISBN: 159420327X EAN: 9781594203275 Kindle: B005KPC9AY Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
In this groundbreaking narrative, longtime Washington Post
reporter Craig Timberg and award-winning AIDS researcher
Daniel Halperin tell the surprising story of how Western
colonial powers unwittingly sparked the AIDS epidemic and
then fanned its rise. Drawing on remarkable new science,
Tinderbox overturns the conventional wisdom on the origins
of this deadly pandemic and the best ways to fight it today. Recent genetic studies have traced the birth of HIV to the
forbidding equatorial forests of Cameroon, where chimpanzees
carried the virus for millennia without causing a major
outbreak in humans. During the Scramble for Africa, colonial
companies blazed new routes through the jungle in search of
rubber and other riches, sending African porters into remote
regions rarely traveled before. It was here that humans
first contracted the strain of HIV that would eventually
cause 99 percent of AIDS deaths around the world. Western powers were key actors in turning a localized
outbreak into a sprawling epidemic as bustling new trade
routes, modern colonial cities, and the rise of prostitution
sped the virus across Africa. Christian missionaries
campaigned to suppress polygamy, but left in its place
fractured sexual cultures that proved uncommonly vulnerable
to HIV. Equally devastating was the gradual loss of the
African ritual of male circumcision, which recent studies
have shown offers significant protection against infection. Timberg and Halperin argue that the same Western hubris that
marked the colonial era has hamstrung the effort to fight
HIV. From the United Nations AIDS program to the Bush
administration's historic relief campaign, global health
officials have favored well-meaning Western
approaches--abstinence campaigns, condom promotion, HIV
testing--that have proven ineffective in slowing the
epidemic in Africa. Meanwhile they have overlooked homegrown
African initiatives aimed squarely at the behaviors
spreading the virus. In a riveting narrative that stretches from colonial
Leopoldville to 1980s San Francisco to South Africa today,
Tinderbox reveals how human hands unleashed this epidemic
and can now overcome it, if only we learn the lessons of the
past.
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