The AIDS Miracle that was not

I saw a documentary about AIDS in Zambia last night – “The Lazarus Effect”, free on YouTube Red Channel. I was astounded by the way they talked about ARV’s (anti-retrovirals) – it was like they were just a given. As though, at some point in the early 2000’s, some beneficent hand (God, the Zambian government, Butros Butros Gali) sprinkled them across the land like manna. Not even a mention of the evil capitalist society and the greed-mongering pharmaceutical companies that developed the drugs and now give them away at or below cost to the poor of the world.

I mean, it’s really amazing: AIDS in the United States started out as, and still remains, a disease that primarily effects homosexuals. I am not making a judgment on homosexuality here, but I am making a judgment on human nature. Anywhere else, AIDS would have been ignored at best. Here? We mobilized hundreds of billions over the course of 25 years and we cured it, and now we give it away to the less fortunate. No other culture in human history has ever had the combination of empathy and expendable resources to do something like that. Not even close.

And yet, not a mention of it in the documentary.