Eradicating AIDS: Strategic Planning 101

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Sep 28, 2007

Archbishop Francisco Chimoio of Mozambique apparently has a new strategy for discouraging promiscuity, contraceptive sex and the spread of AIDS. Contrary to AIDS activists, Chimoio contends that a true battle against the disease “means marriage, people being faithful to their wives” and sexual abstinence before marriage.

This is a laudable message, but it is not the key to the Archbishop’s bold new offensive. Rather, Chimoio’s strategic acumen is revealed in his claim that European condom manufacturers are deliberately infecting their products with the HIV virus “to finish with the African people.” He told the BBC that he actually knew of two specific European countries in which “they are making condoms with the virus on purpose.”

Of course Archbishop Chimoio did not name names, but his sheer inventiveness is stunning. Before, one couldn’t have promiscuous “unsafe” sex without fear of AIDS, and now, the AIDS lobby notwithstanding, it is even more dangerous to have “safe” sex. In addition to the moral and medical benefits, Chimoio has also bolstered African esprit de corps, on the principle that those who have the same enemies are friends.

Inventive as Archbishop Chimoio’s strategy is, it is inconceivable that it could be more than that. The fear of AIDS is such that it strains credulity to think any company would deliberately introduce massive amounts of HIV into a manufacturing process. Shipping shoddy baby formula free to African women to make them dependent on purchasing it later, and dumping cheap cigarettes in the third world to produce a similar result, are both very believable, even typical, capitalist ploys. But not creating products infected with HIV: The dangers aside, it destroys your market.

Sadly, in the end, one can hardly approve Francisco Chimoio’s strategic plan. But gosh, it’s brilliant.