Salon.com > G. Pascal Zachary

The invisible AIDS cure

Thu, 17 May 2007 11:09:00 +0000

Helen Epstein is one of a rare species: the scientist turned storyteller, the specialist turned generalist. As she recounts in her illuminating new book, "The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS." Epstein went to the east African country of Uganda in 1993 as an idealistic young Ph.D. after hearing a presentation on research problems raised by the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa. She decided to abandon her research in San Francisco on obscure aspects of an obscure aphidlike bug and place her formidable skills in the service of the largest public health emergency in the world.

At some cost to her academic career, Epstein joined the race to discover a vaccine that immunizes people against HIV/AIDS. In the early 1990s, the virus was still spreading, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, and the disease was then considered a death sentence. Having volunteered to work on a vaccine, Epstein traveled to a cancer institute in Uganda, best known for the bloody rule of Idi Amin but also viewed as a Mecca for AIDS researchers because of the virulence of the virus there and the vigor with which Ugandans were fighting back.

Blame the natives

Wed, 05 Jul 2006 11:00:00 +0000

On my most recent trip to an African country, I avoided the far north because of a vicious and persistent civil war. In the ultra-safe capital, I was plagued by electricity outages, which usually lasted the entire day. I needed a massive Toyota Land Cruiser to survive the treacherous dirt roads required to reach the farming villages I'm currently studying. A national election had just been held, extending the rule of the countrys unpopular president -- in power since 1986 -- for another five years. Dissenters talked openly about mounting a violent uprising against him, should the results of the election stand. Britain, fed up with official corruption in the country, suspended its aid and was urging other donors to do the same. At the same time, the government arrested an American evangelical preacher for promoting an end to the violent conflict in the north.

This was the mess I found in one of Africa's best-run countries, Uganda -- long a darling of aid donors, blessed with fertile farms, excellent weather and talented, well-educated people. When Uganda is a success story, there is indeed trouble in Africa.

A problem from hell

Thu, 19 Jan 2006 12:19:00 +0000

In the minds of America's opinion leaders, Africa is always in crisis, and the crisis -- whether over disease, hunger, war or natural disaster -- is invariably placed in a frame that Americans, and the wider world, can easily understand. When it comes to wars between people in Africa, the frame of preference is genocide, the systematic slaughter of one group by another.

Genocide is killing on a vast scale -- killing so large and terrible as to seemingly render explanations irrelevant. Genocide appears to stand outside of history, of place, of rationality. The term simplifies the complicated problem of African communal violence into a story of one "tribe's" relentless drive to erase the presence of another.

Yet by imposing the frame of genocide on African conflicts, do we obscure more than we explain? To do more than mourn Africa's dead, shouldn't we understand the actual sources of African conflict? Explanations of civil war are crucial, not only to settling African wars, but for imagining a better future for the world's poorest and most troubled region.

Triumph of the telcos

Tue, 23 Mar 2004 20:30:00 +0000

Technology pundits would have us believe that Internet telephony, which enables "free" phone calls for those with broadband and the proper equipment, is going to topple the established phone companies. But the future may not turn out to be so one-sided. Instead, Internet telephony (commonly referred to as VOIP, for "voice over Internet protocol") may represent just another battleground for the usual fights between the Baby Bells, the long-distance telephone companies and the cable companies.

While the outcome is uncertain, Internet telephony, despite its insurgent, revolutionary credentials, stands a good chance of being co-opted by the oligarchy that rules over telecommunications in America.

That the oligarchs of telecom have the power to control free telephony flows from the following:

Telcos will be able to offer their own Internet telephony services and use their resources to take the price hit while they wait out their competitors, much as they appear to have done in the DSL market.

Internet telephony will create even more demand for bandwidth, which will be sold by -- who else? -- telecom and cable companies.