13 June 2006

Please don't mention the real HIV issues - CNN viewers may not like it!

In the US, CNN aired a prime-time program on HIV on Saturday 29th April 2006. Its topic was world eradication of this epidemic yet the content was surprisingly thin and limited. Hosts were the long-serving CNN (and New York Times) doctor-at-large Sanjay Gupta and Bill Clinton, who has taken a high-profile and personal interest in the subject.

Any hopes of this program being a useful contribution were quickly dashed. Even with the involvement of a committed and informed person of President Clinton's status, the facts were glossed over and the entire program had an air of unreality. It was held in a church with gospel singers, an odd decision in my view for a supposedly serious presentation on public health and epidemiology. Even more distressing is that at least one mainstream church has contributed to the extent of the epidemic by banning condom use, even in marriage. And a church spokesman had the effrontery to address this audience on the 'benefits of abstinence'.

The use of a particular church for the program's venue may also have offended some sensitive Christians, Jews, Moslems and even atheists, many of whom must feel strongly about the subject but not be too keen to be associated with formalities of other faiths.

The program looked as if random people stood from the audience to speak yet it would appear that each was carefully chosen. One of the first was a spokesman for the pharmaceutical industry which is telling. Mr Clinton had already said some 'softly' things including the gratifying reduction of the price of some antiviral drug courses from $400 to $300 in response to humanitarian calls. Mention was made of the enormous commitment of the industry to research. No mention was made of running treatment trials using placebos for some subjects in the third world, nor of why treatment in Canada and Mexico is so much cheaper. A young female victim stood to tell us about the futility of telling young people in impoverished regions about the benefits of sexual abstinence. She explained that it was 'fun' and 'for free', and hence the need for education and protection for all young people.

Some alarming statistics were given by President Clinton and it was pointed out that there are still much HIV transmission in the United States every year. Yet the words 'needles', 'syringe', 'gay', 'methadone' were strenuously avoided in over an hour of palaver. While it is an on-going tragedy, no mention was made of the ability of simple public health measures to prevent transmission of HIV. The US uniquely spends large sums on banning needles and syringes, a policy which neither reduces drug use while at the same time facilitating continued spread of contagious diseases benefiting nobody except drug companies and funeral homes.

This television 'special', far from informing the American public or overseas CNN listeners, clearly resulted in keeping its audience in the dark about the basic facts of this modern epidemic. It would seem that 'freedom of the press' gives unique immunity in the US. It ensures neither balance nor truth.