Astral Codex Ten

AIDS

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AIDS

Article

AIDS is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between February 16, 2021 and May 29, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “Fifty years ago nobody had to worry about AIDS; now lots of people do”; “might not know that AIDS is sexually transmitted”; “which despite its name operates AIDS, malaria, and COVID clinics in Africa”. It most often appears alongside Congress, COVID, UK.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: February 16, 2021
  • Last seen: May 29, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Coronavirus: Links, Discussion, Open Thread
February 16, 2021 · Original source
I don't usually think about this, but a biologist friend confirms: the number of diseases is increasing over time. More and more pathogens evolve to take advantage of human dominance of the planet. Cows and monkeys are out; humans are the Next Big Thing in the infection industry. Health care improves faster than diseases evolve, so on net fewer people die from infectious disease each year. But just because we're winning the race in general doesn't mean we win every leg. New diseases just occasionally get added to the world and stick around permanently. Fifty years ago nobody had to worry about AIDS; now lots of people do. The coronavirus will become a part of daily life, and it's going to suck.
Book Review: From Oversight To Overkill
April 12, 2023 · Original source
I. Risks May Include AIDS, Smallpox, And Death Dr. Rob Knight studies how skin bacteria jump from person to person. In one 2009 study, meant to simulate human contact, he used a Q-tip to cotton swab first one subject’s mouth (or skin), then another’s, to see how many bacteria traveled over. On the consent forms, he said risks were near zero - it was the equivalent of kissing another person’s hand.
His IRB - ie Institutional Review Board, the committee charged with keeping experiments ethical - disagreed. They worried the study would give patients AIDS. Dr. Knight tried to explain that you can’t get AIDS from skin contact. The IRB refused to listen. Finally Dr. Knight found some kind of diversity coordinator person who offered to explain that claiming you can get AIDS from skin contact is offensive. The IRB backed down, and Dr. Knight completed his study successfully.
The eminent doctors and clergymen - the actual board part of the Institutional Review Board - were reduced to rubber stamps. The age of the administrator had begun. These were the sorts of people who might not know that AIDS is sexually transmitted or that smallpox is gone. Their job began and ended with forcing word-for-word compliance with increasingly byzantine regulations.
Sorry, I Still Think MR Is Wrong About USAID
May 29, 2025 · Original source
(is CRS unusual in its low overhead, maybe because of its Catholic affiliation? I checked one of USAID’s biggest secular partners, the Johns Hopkins Program for International Education on Obstetrics and Gynecology (JHPIEGO), which despite its name operates AIDS, malaria, and COVID clinics in Africa. Its NICRA was 17% and its true overhead was 3.9%, and I couldn’t otherwise find any big difference from CRS.)
But - someone recently asked Elon Musk why he cancelled PEPFAR. Musk responded that what, huh, he didn’t know he cancelled PEPFAR, that must have been a mistake, somebody should get around to fixing it. If he’s telling the truth, maybe this redeems him a little? Certainly it makes him better than the ghouls cheering on its cancellation. But it doesn’t redeem him very much. I think if Elon had the same experiences I had, he wouldn’t have been able to sleep at night for fear that he had accidentally cancelled PEPFAR. He would have been calling his lieutenants at odd hours of the morning, all through the winter and early spring, saying “Hey, you definitely didn’t cancel the developing world medical funding, did you?” and the lieutenants would respond “Elon, you’ve asked me that four times tonight already, please stop obsessing over this.”
Inline links: responded
The whole point of this debate is that (almost) everyone agrees “keep the good stuff, but jettison the bad stuff”. But the discussion is dominated by people who think USAID is 90% grift and operas about transgender people, and that the AIDS work is a tiny veneer on top of that to add credibility. My impression is that it’s the opposite. We can’t sensibly consider how to act on a policy of “keep the good stuff, but jettison the bad stuff” without a careful reckoning of who’s right, and whether the relevant instrument is a scalpel vs. a chainsaw.