BEATING DR. BEETROOT. In the world of the AIDS pandemic, South Africa is, as Stephen Lewis, the U.N. Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, memorably termed it, "the unkindest cut of all." The only country in the region rich enough to truly mount an aggressive campaign against the disease is hampered and hamstrung by an administration so aggressively opposed to science that they make the Bush crew look like the MIT Electron Microscope Appreciation Club. South Africa's health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, believes beetroots, garlic, and African potatoes are an effective replacement for anti-retroviral drugs, which the government fought to keep out of the hands of their citizens. The murderous negligence is taking its toll: One out of every eight HIV cases in the world is currently in South Africa. Nine hundred of the country's citizens die every day from the disease. For perspective, if you scale their population to ours, that would be 5,744 daily deaths, or almost two 9-11s every single day. The ire and anger of the world's scientific and humanitarian community, though, has begun to shame the nation into action. The sharpest blow came at the recent Toronto AIDS Conference, where the delightfully impolitic U.N. bureaucrat did exactly what U.N. bureaucrats are not supposed to do and blasted the South African government's "wrong, immoral, indefensible" approach to the crisis. "It is the only country in Africa," said Lewis, "whose government continues to propound theories more worthy of a lunatic fringe than of a concerned and compassionate state...The government has a lot to atone for. I�m of the opinion that they can never achieve redemption." Now, South Africa's health minister is being sidelined and a new commission will be created to coordinate AIDS treatment. Here's to hoping.
--Ezra Klein