Author: Brian Carnell

With Mbeki Out of the Picture, AIDS Strategy in South Africa Goes Ahead

The last year or so should have seen news reports about steps that South AFrica was taking to tackles it enormous AIDS problem. Instead, news reports were filled with the controversy over president Thabo Mbeki’s denial that HIV causes AIDS. Although most of his ministers seemed unified behind Mbeki, he came in for criticism from the world scientific establishment and even former president Nelson Mandela directed some veiled criticism at Mbeki’s position. A few weeks ago, Mbeki did his entire country a favor by effectively withdrawing from the AIDS debate.

Mbeki relinquished control over the controversial committee assembled in South Africa to tackle the AIDS committee. That committee had been stacked with people who believed that AIDS is caused by drug use and other behaviors rather than by HIV, along with people convinced that AIDS is a Western conspiracy to depopulate Africa.

That committee has apparently been dissolved and replaced by a new committee chosen by the Mbeki’s cabinet ministers. In addition, South Africa’s Sunday Times reported that Mbeki told the executive committee of the African National Congress that he would no longer make public statements about the relation between HIV and AIDS.

About four million South Africans — 10 percent of the population — are infected with HIV/AIDS. A couple weeks after Mbeki’s announcement, the government released a report including specific recommendations on condom use, monogamy and other approaches to stop the disease which implicitly recognize the connection between HIV and AIDS. This is a very important first step.

Not that there aren’ t still enormous problems. The government unbelievably still refuses to provide anti-AIDS medication to pregnant women with the disease. Study after study has demonstrated that giving antiviral medication to pregnant women is the most effective method of preventing transmission to newborn infants, yet the South AFrican government stubbornly refuses to offer antivirals to pregnant woman, saying it needs more time to study the issue.

The ANC, in fact, maintains that the antivirals are dangerous and accuses opposition parties who disagree with the government’s position of trying to force dangerous drugs onto South African AIDS patients.

Source:

Mbeki ‘withdraws’ from AIDS debate. The BBC, October 16, 2000.

SA’s new war against AIDS. The BBC, October 24, 2000.

Mbeki accepts defeat after protests over AIDS policy. Tim Butcher, The Telegraph (UK), October 18, 2000.

ALF Activist Receives Two Year Prison Sentence

In September I wrote about the capture of Animal Liberation Front activist Justin Samuel. Samuel was arrested in Belgium after fleeing the United States to avoid federal charges related to the release of animals from fur farms. Upon his return to the United States, Samuel plead guilty to two misdemeanors.

Last week Samuel became the first person sentenced under the federal animal enterprise terrorism law and received a two year sentence in federal prison for his role in the animal releases. He was also ordered to pay more than $360,000 to business he had harmed. The sentence was the maximum allowable for misdemeanor charges under the statute.

In sentencing Samuel, federal magistrate Stephen Crocker told Samuel that, “You have the right to voice an opinion, but you’re not being prosecuted or sentenced for voicing an opinion but for engaging in an act of terrorism.”

Peter D. Young, who allegedly accompanied Samuel on his fur farm raids, also fled after being indicted and remains at large. The duo released about 36,000 mink from Wisconsin farms during October 1997, but were found in the area with a list of mink farms compiled by the ALF as well as equipment designed to carry out raids against fur farms.

Samuel was allowed to plea bargain to misdemeanor charges after agreeing to “make a full, complete, truthful statement regarding his involvement in violations of federal criminal statutes charged in the original Indictment, as well as the involvement of all other individuals known to him regarding the crimes charged in that Indictment. And the defendant agrees to testify fully and truthfully at any trials or hearings.”

Samuel’s decision to cooperate with authorities hasn’t exactly endeared him to the ALF crowed, but here’s hoping his testimony ensure that he’ll soon be joined in prison by other animal rights terrorists.

Source:

Animal rights activist gets two years in prison. The Associated Press, November 3, 2000.

Activist sentenced for letting minks go. Kevin Murphy, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 4, 2000.

Did Harvard Reject Book Because of Its Pro-Marriage Viewpoint?

Stanley Kurtz wrote an interesting summary of the controversy surrounding Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher’s book, The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially. The book was originally scheduled to be published by Harvard University Press, but at the very last moment Harvard dumped the book and it went on to be published by Doubleday.

What gives? The book passed vetting by Harvard’s normal review process but got killed by the press’ Board of Synics which claimed Waite and Gallagher hadn’t adequately backed up their claims with enough evidence.

I haven’t read The Case for Marriage, but according to Kurtz the evidentiary problems are the sorts that are endemic to any book in the social sciences in that it establishes a lot of interesting correlations that don’t necessarily establish causation. For example, statistical studies and polls demonstrate two conclusions about married people: they tend to have higher incomes and they report having better sex lives than single people.

This certainly debunks claims to the contrary by feminists that marriage harms income and/or isn’t very sexy, but does it prove that marriage causes better sex and higher incomes? Of course not — it could simply be that people with higher potential incomes who are better lovers are more likely to get married. But that sort of objection is inherent with any study of social trends.

What irks Kurtz, however, is that at the same time Harvard rejected The Case for Marriage for its supposed lack of evidence and too strong of tone, it has had no problem publishing four books by Catharine MacKinnon which make grotesque claims that MacKinnon never even tries to back up with evidence.

In fact MacKinnon pretty much concedes that there is no evidence for her claim that pornography causes violence against women and retreated in one of her books to the ridiculous position that “there is no evidence that pornography does not harm,” which is about a vacuous claim as anyone could hope to write (in fact, as Kurtz notes, MacKinnon actually argues that even controlled social experiments to find the effects of pornography are useless since most men are prone to rape and there is no way to get a control group).

Similarly, Kurtz notes that Harvard press’s Board of Synics was apparently offended by the pro-marriage sentiments of Waite and Gallagher, but had no problem publishing a book by MacKinnon in which she wrote that, “What in the liberal view looks like love and romance looks a lot like hatred and torture to the feminist” among other things.

In fact in the Harvard-published Only Words, MacKinnon actually agreed with the legal theory put forth by a serial rapist that he should be set free since he had no free will to choose to rape or not — pornography programmed him to rape and he had no choice in the matter. Given the heightened awareness at most college campuses about rape issues, it is stunning that Harvard Press found MacKinnon’s legalistic defense of rapists uncontroversial while Waite and Gallagher’s defense of monogamous marriage is simply too much for it to stomach.

Source:

What Harvard Finds Unfit to Print. Stanley Kurtz, The Wall Street Journal, October 18, 2000.

MathWorld’s Copyright Problems.

The O’Reilly Network recently featured an article by John McDonald, Treasure Trove Looted, which shed some light on situation surrounding Eric Weisstein’s MathWorld. I had heard the problems involved copyright issues, but assumed they involved the sort of copyright issues that are more common with the Internet where copyrighted material gets posted on a web site. In this case, though, the problem is far more complex and contains a great lesson for authors.

It seems that Weisstein’s site, which contained a lot of valuable information about math-related topics, became so successful that he successfully pitched a book proposal to CRC Press and much of the content Weisstein wrote for the web site became a book, The CRC Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics.

Here’s where it starts to get weird. After publishing the book, CRC Press informed Weisstein that its contract with him clearly granted CRC Press ownership of any derivative works, and the web site was just such a derivative work. After some back and forth, the site is completely shut down as of this writing. In effect, CRC Press maintains they bought the copyright not to just the book, but to the web site as well, and they don’t want the web site competing with the book.

First, the logic here is completely backward. The web site will only promote sales of the book. Since there is still no good way to electronically access reference materials consistently, its unlikely the existence of the web pages would have cut into sales the book (more likely fans of the site would have made up a substantial number of the book’s buyers).

Second, Weisstein apparently made a huge mistake by not making sure the web site wasn’t considered a derivative work before he signed his publishing contract. I mean I don’t know about you, but if Random House calls and tells me they want me to write a book about overpopulation based on my web site, the first thing I’d want is my lawyer and their lawyers coming to an agreement that the book contract wouldn’t affect the copyright of the web site.

In fact a couple years ago when I was contacted by a publisher who bought the rights to republish an essay I’d written for one of my web sites, I made darn sure that they were not purchasing the copyright as well and my future use of the essay would not be restricted in any way.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve stopped working for companies that wanted me to sign away more of the rights for my writing than I was willing to do. Some people I know have looked at me a bit skeptically when I’ve mentioned this, considering it an overreaction on my part. On the other hand it’s cases like Weisstein’s that show just how important it is to understand the legal ramifications of what you’re doing before you sign any sort of publishing contract.

More Death from Above

On Friday astronomer said they had identified a suspected asteroid that had a 1 in 500 chance of hitting the Earth in 2030, but today they apparently downgraded the risk saying that the object would actually miss the Earth by about 3 million miles and was no longer considered a serious threat.

After 2030, though, the picture might not be so rosey. For a 2071 flyby the risks of a collision could be as high as 1 in 1,000.

And just so you know how little we know about near earth asteroids — nobody’s even sure the object really is an asteroid. There’s apparently some suspicion that it might just be an Apollo-era booster rocket!

Information on the original announcement can be found in the IAU Technical Review Team Assessment on Asteroid 2000 SG344, and a followup news story on MSNBC, Asteroid threat downgraded sums up the aftermath, including a stinging e-mail message from a scientist wondering why the IAU went public so early on such flimsy evidence.

Why the Sega Rumors Are Probably True

PC Gamer is just one of several game news outlets reporting rumors that Sega is going to manufacture a PCI card that will allow people to play Dreamcast games on their computers. A lot of people think this rumor almost has to be false since the Dreamcast uses a proprietary optical disc format (although the copy protection on it was hacked awhile ago).

Here’s why I think the rumors are probably true: this would be an incredibly stupid move by a company, Sega, that has a long history of making incredibly stupid moves. Oh yeah, I would want to buy a Dreamcast PCI card so I could play the Dreamcast port of Unreal: Tournament rather than the PC version. Or maybe PC gamers are dying to ditch The Sims to play Seaman? Such a move would be crazy given that the console and PC games really service different markets — which is precisely why I would bet anything the folks at Sega are seriously considering it (btw, I’m not a PC snob and own several console systems; it’s just that the console is very good at what it does and PC games are good at what they do, and the result is usually a waste of time and money when companies try to bridge the two).