Science, Politics, and the Presidential Aids 'Cure'
Science, Politics, and the Presidential Aids 'Cure'
复制标题
DOI：
10.1093/afraf/adp057
复制
发表时间：
2009-10-01
期刊：
影响因子：
2.8
通讯作者：
Leach, Melissa
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Cassidy, Rebecca;Leach, Melissa
2007年初，一个非洲小国的总统宣布了他基于草药、伊斯兰和传统医学的艾滋病“疗法”，导致数百名艾滋病毒检测呈阳性的人报名参加。这引发了一场围绕艾滋病治疗的持续但非常沉默的争论。总统治疗的出现可以在最近全球艾滋病资金和规划的政治和科学背景下理解，以及“外国”和当地对生物医学和研究的关注之间的长期紧张关系。在呼吁传统，种族，宗教，民族和泛非主义方面，总统的计划似乎与主流科学话语截然相反。然而，在促进和争取对他的主张的支持时，这位总统成功地吸收和利用了生物医学艾滋病治疗话语的关键要素：声称自己是一名医生，并将CD 4和病毒载量计数以及个人证词作为治疗效果的证据。对于如何在感染艾滋病毒的弱势人群中解释这些证据的不确定性鼓励了许多人自愿参加。这种科学政治，沿着这个特殊国家的威胁性政治和安全做法，有助于解释为什么迄今为止，无论是在国内还是在国际上，对总统的计划都没有多少公开的批评。
In early 2007 the President of a small African country announced his 'cure' for AIDS based on herbal, Islamic, and traditional medicine, resulting in the enrolment of several hundred people testing HIV-positive. This unleashed an ongoing yet remarkably silent controversy around AIDS treatment. The emergence of the presidential treatment can be understood in the political and scientific context of recent global AIDS funding and programming, and longstanding tensions between 'foreign' and local concerns with biomedicine and research. Framed in terms of appeals to tradition, ethnicity, religion, nation, and pan-Africanism, the President's programme appears diametrically opposed to mainstream scientific discourses. Yet in promoting and garnering support for his claims, this President has successfully co-opted and harnessed key elements of biomedical AIDS treatment discourse: in claims to identity as a doctor, and in deploying CD4 and viral load counts and personal testimonies as evidence of treatment efficacy. Uncertainty over how to interpret such evidence amongst vulnerable people living with HIV has encouraged many to volunteer. Such politics of science, along with the threatening political and security practices of this particular state, help explain why to date there has been so little overt criticism of the President's programme either within the country or internationally.