60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

252 development dialogue december 2008 – revisiting the heart of darkness
right ideological denialism. Denialism could instead be refuted by
assertion of best contemporary understanding. Contemporary ARV
science is not based on certainty, but is certain enough to motivate
comprehensive ARV policy now. Even if the future may show possible
other understandings that will refute this one, science points to
certain credible paths at this moment in time. It is not necessary to
speak of outright lies and misrepresentations of facts by denialist politicians,
but rather that denialism denies ‘facts that others generally accept as
proven on the basis of massive and overwhelming evidence’ (Cameron
2005: 132, italics ours). Today, surely, people undeniably die in need
of interventions that could keep them alive. Thoroughly political,
the virus has its existence as an ‘intra-actor’ (Barad 2003) in an illness
scenario of AIDS, a scenario that can be altered with ARVs: there is
overwhelming evidence, even if no certainty. It is hardly necessary
for strategic purposes that some areas of policy are blatantly de-politicised.
It is worrying if the biomedical knowledge loses its intra-active
character, and activists demand a blind faith in science, and argue that
science has sanctity and authority that is to be taken for granted.
There are ways of arguing for a biomedical intervention without
needing to resort to the medical authority card. Also the TAC practices
describe biomedicine as a web of changing understandings, conceptions
and practices, where the patients’ views and practices matter
too. In such a representation a polarity between the lay and the medical
is not necessary. Neither is the emphasis on hierarchy and the notion
that the lay sphere should not scrutinise or criticise the medical
domain (because what can ‘ordinary people’ know about that?). In
many TAC practices, a ‘collaborative’ view on medicine is promoted
– the patients’ active collaboration in care and decision-making is key
to a successful treatment regime. But then again, often, the ‘authoritarian’
view is also promoted, especially when Mbeki’s denialism is
ridiculed.
The major argument here is that when such, rather understandable,
expression of frustration takes the shape of deliberate de-politication
of the body and the biomedical knowledge about it in the activist
discourse, there is a cost that undermines some of the most valuable
aspects of the campaign: the message that the HIV/AIDS epidemic
is political, its trajectory can be changed by political will and action,
and a multitude of actors can be involved in this.
The powerful message that a failure to engage in meaningful HIV
policy is a crime committed by the politicians in charge can, in fact, be
backed up by a vision of politics that thoroughly politicises the body.