Check out Susan Okie’s front-page story in the Washington Post on the CDC’s latest release of AIDS statistics. Complete reiteration of CDC orthodoxy, with nary an attempt to subject any of it to the teensiest bit of skepticism or statistical analysis. I think most reporters simply assume that an agency tracking diseases is so obviously laudatory that scrutinizing its press-releases is somehow rude. But surely an AIDS reporter should be aware of the healthy debate about what we reliably know about HIV transmission in America right now, and aware that many of the studies she cites as authorities have been thoroughly questioned in the gay and AIDS press. And surely someone with some basic knowledge of statistics also knows that drops of 20 to 40 percent in an epidemic are almost impossible to sustain after a while, especially when the number of deaths out of a population of 270 million is now somewhere around 20,000. The latest CDC report is not that revealing, in fact. Since its only solid data are in those states where reporting cases of HIV transmission is mandatory, and since the states with by far the biggest HIV load aren’t among these (yet), most of this is educated guess-work. Still, it looks as if AIDS deaths (a relatively solid number) have plateaued at around 20,000 a year. The current rate of HIV transmission is still anybody’s guess.
ENGLISH ANTI-AMERICANISM: Compared to France, of course, it’s piddling. And the English consume Americana like Midwesterners engulf carbohydrates. It’s always grating to read relatively serious newspapers in London taking Hollywood schlock seriously, but then it’s better than much of British popular culture, with better production values too. But every now and again, you see something that encapsulates an attitude. Check out Christina Odone’s little essay in the Guardian and you’ll see what I mean. She’s not completely wrong about the picture of American women we are fed in popular culture, but there’s a parochial quality to the analysis that is peculiarly English. In fact, it’s parochialism dressed up as world-weariness, which is a pretty good description of the Economist as well. Still, it’s the kind of piece that couldn’t be printed in a major American paper, because of sentences like this: “Try talking to an American woman about anything she’s not worked on, given birth to, or slept with: she can’t. Outside the professional, or the emotional, she loses her bearing.” I think she’s been reading too much Quindlen. Then my brother emailed me this little piece of British twittery about the fact that Americans have no sense of irony. Notice that Brits mistake Californians for Americans. Also notice that the London wags can’t spell “San Francisco.” Ah, but those Brits are so subtle and well-educated. My ass they are.
LETTERS: An American woman says what she thinks of her British counterparts; etc.
STEM CELL PATIENCE: Timely report from Canada on a breakthrough in harvesting stem cells from human and mice skin. Maybe human embryos are not the only way. Maybe some kind of prudent wait-and-see approach (similar to W’s) could bring us the best of both worlds. Curious this hasn’t been reported in the U.S. press (apart from buried in the Wall Street Journal). Or maybe not that curious at all.
The Dish 