Tampa Prep 2009-2010 Impact Defense File


AT: AIDS Global Spread (Africa Specific)



Download 2.71 Mb.
Page12/230
Date28.01.2017
Size2.71 Mb.
#9494
1   ...   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   ...   230

AT: AIDS Global Spread (Africa Specific)



LARGE OUTBREAKS OF AIDS ARE LIMITED TO AFRICA, SPREAD IS EMPIRICALLY DENIED.
Andrew Rice, The Nation, 6-11-07 (“An African Solution,” Vol. 284 Issue 23, p25-31, 5p, Ebsco)
For all our worrying, the “HIV rate in the United States never exceeded one percent,” Helen Epstein writes in her new book, The Invisible Cure. “At first, some UN officials predicted that HIV would spread rapidly in the general population of Asia and eastern Europe, but the virus has been present in these regions for decades and such extensive spread has never occurred.” Sub-Saharan Africa is a different story. In some countries there, well over 30 percent of adults younger than 50 are thought to be infected with HIV. To appreciate the scale of the epidemiological disaster, consider this: Hear disease, the leading cause of death in the United States, killed some 650,000 Americans in 2004. If AIDS had hit this country as hard as it has Zimbabwe or Botswana, 3–4 million Americans would be dying of AIDS every year.

AT: AIDS Hurts Infrastructure



COUNTRIES WON’T BE INCAPACITATED BY AIDS – STABLE INFRASTRUCTURE CAN SUSTAIN AN OUTBREAK.


Landis Mackellar, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis William McGreevey Futures Group, 2003 (Foreign Affairs; Jul/Aug2003, Vol. 82 Issue 4, p211-212, 2p, Ebsco)
According to Eberstadt, hivffiaids will have two negative impacts on the three countries' economic output. First, deaths from aids will reduce the size of the labor force, and second, the epidemic will reduce output per worker. Even if one accepts the former, the latter is still a dubious proposition. Eberstadt assumes that these societies and economies will have absolutely no capacity to adjust in any way, or to cope with the negative socioeconomic effects of the disease. Yet such total incapacitation is quite contrary to the nature of human societies. In order to find credible the consequences of the hivffiaids epidemic in Russia posited by Eberstadt, one must believe that the disease's impact on investment and productivity will be not only serious but catastrophic and unprecedented in the era of modern economic growth. His results for India and China are equally flawed. They too assume that output per worker moves in lock step with life expectancy, there being no possibility for coping strategies or adaptation. Decision-makers and opinion leaders should beware of any conclusions based on such a faulty premise.


AT: AIDS  Instability (Africa Specific)



AIDS DOESN’T CONTRIBUTE TO CONFLICT AND REPRESSION IN AFRICA. POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT AND DEMOCRACY STILL SPREAD DESPITE INFECTIONS.
Alex DeWaal 07, program director at Social Science Research Council and a lecturer on the Department of Government, Harvard University, author of AIDS and Power: Why There is No Political Crisis—Yet, 2007 (“The Politics of a Health Crisis” Harvard International Review; Spring2007, Vol. 29 Issue 1, p20-24, 5p)
Some of these fears are indeed materializing. Others still loom. But some have been proven unfounded or at least exaggerated. Foremost among the dire predictions that have not come true is the expectation that the epidemic would cause a governance crisis, leaving conflict, repression, and anarchy in its wake. Africa has these ills aplenty, but AIDS has not been indicated in their etiology. Since 1999, the University of Cape Town has conducted public opinion surveys in a growing number of African countries. These "Afrobarometer" surveys are a rich source of data on what ordinary citizens think. They have revealed a simple but surprising fact about public opinion; namely that AIDS is never at the top of the list of issues of concern for a population. That position is occupied by unemployment, poverty, famine, and crime, depending on the country in question. Although "health" occasionally comes in at number two, AIDS very rarely breaks into the top three, or even top five issues, though in some countries, notably South Africa, it has been climbing the ladder of concern. AIDS occupies a commensurately marginal place in African political life. No African government has been overthrown because of its AIDS policies. No election has been decided on this issue. In fact, in South Africa, die ruling African National Congress (ANC) was reelected with an increased majority in 2004 despite President Thabo Mbeki's notorious denial that HIV' causes AIDS. True, South .Africa has seen street protests over access to treatment, but the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which organizes them, has no counterparts elsewhere in the continent. Furthermore, its agenda is reform and not revolution. Surprising as it may seem to AIDS activists from else where, many TAC leaders remain loyal ANC members. Their dispute with Mbeki is not the insurrectionary fervor of the ANC toppling apartheid, but rather one wing of the new political establishment struggling to bring its errant colleagues back in line. Why is it that a disease which will kill one in six adult Africans and more than half of adults in the continent's southernmost six countries is not the subject of overwhelming political passion? The demographer John Caldwell noted that life expectancy In many African cities is comparable to that in France during World War I—and bas been over a much longer period than those four years of war but while France was traumatized by the death of so many young men, political life in Africa continues in a remarkably normal way; democracy is actually spreading

AFRICA’S AIDS CRISIS WON’T SPILL OVER INTO MILITARY CONFLICT OR GLOBAL ECONOMIC PROBLEMS.

Nicholas Eberstadt, Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute, Senior Adviser to the National Bureau of Asian Research, Foreign Affairs November 2002 - December 2002

Africa's AIDS catastrophe is a humanitarian disaster of world historic proportions, yet the economic and political reverberations from this crisis have been remarkably muted outside the continent itself. The explanation for this awful dissonance lies in the region's marginal status in global economics and politics. By many measures, for example, sub-Saharan Africa's contribution to the world economy is less than Switzerland's. In military affairs, no regional state, save perhaps South Africa, has the capacity to conduct overseas combat operations, and indeed sub-Saharan governments are primarily preoccupied with local troubles. The states of the region are thus not well positioned to influence events much beyond their own borders under any circumstances, good or ill -- and the cruel consequence is that the world pays them little attention



Download 2.71 Mb.

Share with your friends:
1   ...   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   ...   230




The database is protected by copyright ©ininet.org 2024
send message

    Main page