Lori Hunter is a sociologist and population scientist at the University of Colorado. She said one in five adults is HIV-positive in the rural areas of South Africa, where she studies. She’s researching the environmental impact of a family losing an adult member to AIDS.
Lori Hunter: We were wondering if they’re more likely to make more dietary use of local resources.
In households where a bread-winner has died from AIDS, Hunter found the family often has to rely more on the land, and less on goods from the market.
Lori Hunter: One woman said to me, ‘locusts are now our beef’ – which is a very clear substitution.
South African villagers already eat spinach, herbs, and insects collected locally. They also make and sell items like wooden utensils, from materials found in nature. So, Hunter is worried that when a bread-winner dies of AIDS, increased reliance on the surrounding environment is unsustainable.
Lori Hunter: As those kinds of resources dwindle, opportunities for the generation of those livelihood strategies also dwindle.
Greater dependence on natural resources could also contribute to food insecurity throughout South Africa – another reason, Hunter suggested, to think broadly about the impact of AIDS.
Our thanks to:
Lori Hunter is an associate professor of sociology and environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. A key part of Dr. Hunter’s current research agenda explores natural resources and rural livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa. She has focused on natural resources as coping strategies for HIV/AIDS-impacted households; the role of wild foods in food security; and migration as related to climate variability.
Unfortunately, as is the case when the truth is not popular due to other interests playing out, (big pharma especially Merck, CDC funding and the billions being distributed to “AIDS” organizations) HIV, it is long known now is a retrovirus, unable to cause cell destruction, unlike a real cytotoxic virus. This is verified by Abbot Labs and was admitted by Luc Montagnier himself. Retrovirus are very weak virus that the bodys immune system passes continually on a daily basis. Thousands of them are passed. The tests used to detect the antibodies to HIV, not the virus itself, are flawed as this is well know now to those who’ve made the effort to research. The problem lies in the proteins on the test strips that react to many different diseases and conditions, all that have other causation outside of HIV. In Africa, many of the standard diseases will cross react with the test. Then Africans with weakened immune systems are prodded to go on the AZT derivative drugs (chemo therapy) and they die. They also conveniently die of the age old diseases in Africa which are on the UNAIDS and CDC list of AIDS diseases! Getting it? And the proteins can’t be verified to be actual HIV proteins as Gallo had to co-culture HIV with leukemia cells to get it to grow. Or with growth additives. AIDS is a lie as there are now 70 some diseases that are in the AIDS category, ALL which have other causations outside of HIV. HIV live compatibly with the cells they infect. They are called non-cytotoxic or sometimes passenger virus. Get informed. Try http://www.rethinkingaids.com or http://www.aliveandwell.org. or http://www.duesberg.com
It is a bad situation, and other people need to step in. There are two things wrong with the scene in South Africa:
1. Natural resources are being used up
2. People are relying on the environment once the HIV/AIDS person has, to bluntly put it, died.
This should not happen, for the health of our world’s people, and for our (rain)forests. I feel strongly that it shouldn’t happen.