Rod Dreher: September 2009 Archives

Thanks to the reader who, in a thread below, brought my attention to this fascinating New Atlantis article about AIDS and psychology in Africa. Look:

It is natural for anyone facing a terminal disease to ask, Why me? This is an exasperated, unanswerable cri de coeur in the rational West--one of the steps of the grieving process, we are told, that we all just need to get through. But many Africans have their own kind of answer to that question.

African tribes are not a homogenous, undifferentiated mass, but the vast majority traditionally held in common a worldview of causation very different from our own. With reference to illness, it is called the personalistic theory of disease. Even today, most Africans believe that any major occurrence, good or bad, has two causes. The first might be called physical: for instance, that a retrovirus causes AIDS by destroying the cells of the immune system. The second is a spiritual, less tangible cause, but is perceived to be no less real. Edward Evans-Pritchard, whose ethnography of the Nuer people of Sudan is a foundational work of anthropology, put Africans' cosmological outlook this way: One might understand that a house collapsed because termites damaged it. But the more important question is, Who sent the termites?

The author, Travis Kavulla, goes on to deliver a fascinating essay in cultural anthropology, and how African religious and cultural beliefs make it hard to treat AIDS in a Western way. His piece is far too complex, and too good, to sum up tidily here, but he discusses how and why treating and stopping AIDS in Africa cannot be effectively done with the mechanical Western model. You simply must embed traditional medicine in a framework of traditional African spirituality. Kavulla writes:

The public-health lobby answers these questions, vis-à-vis one of Africa's greatest calamities, by saying, essentially, "What's wrong with you is you haven't been using condoms." This is the narrow-minded response, much more so than the call for behavioral change. As long as this attitude persists, Western policy will remain discordant with the realm of cause and effect within which Africans are operating. It is hardly news that sub-Saharan Africa is in the grips of a religious and social upheaval. Church attendance is soaring, and even those denominations, like Roman Catholicism, that are hemorrhaging members to evangelical sects are nonetheless still growing in absolute numbers. It is highly uncommon to attend a church service on a Sunday in Africa where the building is not filled to capacity. Christianity, as well as Islam, is a huge force whose day-to-day impact on African lives cannot be ignored. Any successful HIV/AIDS strategy will have to enlist churches, their moral authority, and their enormous memberships.

Only behavioral change will turn the tide against AIDS in Africa, he writes, and the only behavioral change that has a chance of working is that which appeals to the spiritual convictions of African people. Kavulla again:

The Western public-health lobby, bred in a culture that preaches unconstrained freedom of the individual in the realm of sexual relations, is put off by talk of moralizing policies, or of any policy that de-emphasizes condoms. But it needs a dose of its own advice. It must stop imposing its own agenda on Africa. It must realize that HIV has a social dimension that must be addressed, that Africans are naturally wont to view this disease, which perversely inverts the life-giving act of sex, as a moral calamity. The sooner the donor community realizes this, and reorients its policies to fit African realities, the better.

Read the whole thing.

I'm becoming obsessed with this guy in a completely hathotic way (hathos = the feeling of pleasure derived from hating something) which is to say, in the same car-wreck way that I used to obsess over watching Jerry Springer and TBN. I'm watching Beck now, and he's got on his chalkboard a kind of diagram drawn connecting Obama to Valerie Jarrett, his White House aide, whom he's also connected to ACORN and communism (really, there's a hammer-and-sickle on his chalkboard next to Jarrett's image). Apparently Jarrett knows somebody in Chicago who is a slumlord. So now Barack Obama, in Beck's world, is responsible for a woman in the Chicago project named "Peaches" (I kid you not) having to live in a dump.

Beck just thanked his audience for having the patience to listen to him explain it all to them.

Honestly, how can people take this guy seriously? Communism in the White House? Obama a filthy scumbag because Peaches can't get her apartment fixed? A conservative colleague just stuck his head in my door and said, "You watching this guy? I've been hearing about his show, and I just turned it on. Unbelievable. I used to like him when he was on the radio. What happened to him?"

I know, I know. I'll get over it. Just bear with me. I cannot believe people get taken in by this boob, is all. Best-selling author!

I've been meaning to write about a conversation I had recently with Dr. K, a scientist who works in the climate field. When I found out what he did for a living, I told him I'd been working on an essay about how science gets misinterpreted in popular culture. One scientist I'd questioned mentioned to me that the news media play a big role in popularizing misconceptions of scientific research for a couple of reasons: 1) journalists don't really understand the science, and misreport it unwittingly; 2) because most people don't understand technical details in science, they have a bias toward interpreting research in terms of narrative -- good vs. evil, etc. -- that distorts the real meaning of the research.

In this context, I mentioned to Dr. K. that we journalists -- myself included -- have a strong bias toward believing in the authority of science, and of scientists, in large part because we are scientifically illiterate ourselves, and we trust that scientists are not spinning us. Dr. K. said that's a big mistake, and that I would be startled to learn how much the allegedly pure and unbiased realm of research and applied science is guided by politics and money. He said that he has big problems with predominant global warming theories, because in his opinion, the science simply isn't there to support what's being claimed. He digressed into a brief explanation for why he remains skeptical. I told him that I found that interesting, because I, like almost every other journalist I know, assumes that the overwhelming scientific consensus on the cause of climate change is true.

Dr. K. said that there are a number of reliable scientific papers questioning the accepted consensus, but they are rarely seen, and certainly not publicized. He explained that an enormous amount of money for climate science research goes through the UN, where there is a strong bias against questioning the official story. In fact, Dr. K. was unwilling to let me quote him by name. He didn't say why, but I understood from the context that he was afraid of endangering his own research by outing himself as a global warming skeptic.

Now, I don't know Dr. K. -- we only had a relatively brief conversation -- so I don't know what his own biases might be. But when he brought up the UN, I recalled a 2002 story I did for National Review about AIDS in Africa, and how both Western cultural politics and a bias in favor of technology and pharmaceutical intervention greatly distorted the way medical aid was delivered to Africans. That story isn't online, but this follow-up I did for NRO is. Excerpt:

Why wasn't the Ugandan model embraced and emulated all over Africa? That's a scandalous tale I tell in much greater detail in the current issue of National Review. It has to do with Western scientists, doctors, and AIDS workers having a deep suspicion of, and even antipathy for, any public-health program that smacks of moralizing, or involves religion. It also has to do with a bias in favor of expensive, medical technology-based "solutions," despite their lack of effectiveness.

[snip]

Edward C. Green, a Harvard researcher who has tried in vain to wake the West up to what Uganda accomplished, also welcomes the new money for AIDS treatment, but is concerned that the Bush initiative could become another case of throwing good money after bad.

"It might be expected that Ugandans and Senegalese would constitute a vocal lobbying group that would insist that AIDS prevention funds be spent in ways they know to be effective. And there are certainly some who will speak out," says Green.

"But people in resource-poor countries everywhere have learned to play the game involved in getting donor funds," he continues. "The name of the game is asking for what the donor organizations want to provide, namely drugs and condoms. Yes, these are both needed, but if experience to date is any guide to the future, funds would be even better spent supporting the kind of faithfulness/abstinence AIDS prevention interventions that brought down infection rates in the countries mentioned."

Dr. Rand Stoneburner, an epidemiologist who has worked on AIDS in Africa for a variety of public-health agencies, says experience in Uganda and elsewhere demonstrates that money and the drugs it buys alone will not stop the epidemic. Putting so much money into antiretroviral therapy while not giving proven behavior-change strategies their due is a mistake, he says.

"We must support countries with a sincere commitment to provide social and political resources to turn this thing around and not create future generations dependent on foreign aid for pharmaceutical lifelong support," Dr. Stoneburner says.

This is absolutely infuriating:

Gov. Rick Perry has replaced the head of a state commission that is investigating a questionable finding of arson in the case that led to the 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, just as the commission was due to hold a public hearing examining the case.

The commission had hired a nationally known expert whose review of the Willingham case was released last month. The author, Craig Beyler, called the investigation slipshod and determined that almost all of the evidence presented was based on junk science.

Beyler was due to address the commission, review his report and take questions at a meeting Friday in Irving. He had reached the conclusion that no credible evidence existed to believe that the fire, that killed three children, was caused by arson.

This week, the governor chose not to extend the terms of Austin lawyer Sam Bassett, former chair of the commission, as well as two others on the nine-member Texas Forensic Science Commission. The new commission chair promptly cancelled Friday's meeting on the Beyler report.

Unbelievable! The arrogance of the Texas governor is utterly galling. The state owes the public a response to serious evidence pointing to the possibility that Texas executed an innocent man. But now it appears that he's doing a Wednesday Afternoon Massacre, trying to cut off through executive maneuvering an investigation that could humiliate the state.

This is wrong. This is, in fact, an outrage. Read this to understand why. If you favor the death penalty, you have to be disgusted by this, because you surely don't want the state executing the innocent. If the state believes Willingham was in fact guilty of murder, then it ought to make that case as forcefully and as convincingly as it can. But if not, then for God's sake, let the truth come out, and let's figure out where to go from here to strengthen the legal system so that innocent men do not go to their deaths in the name of the people.

Is this what conservative governance of the state of Texas comes down to? The Republican governor closing down a hearing into a matter of great public concern because he doesn't like the conclusion that might be drawn from it?

Gov. Perry is terrified. This is the act of a frightened politician. What is he afraid of? The truth?

Dave Taylor and his happy family: