Foreign Policy Research Institute A Nation Must Think Before it Acts Tinderbox: How the West Sparked the AIDS Epidemic and How the World Can Finally Overcome It

Tinderbox: How the West Sparked the AIDS Epidemic and How the World Can Finally Overcome It

  • March 14, 2012

In this groundbreaking narrative, longtime Washington Post reporter Craig Timberg and award-winning AIDS researcher Daniel Halperin tell the surprising story of how Western colonial powers unwittingly sparked the AIDS epidemic and then fanned its rise. Drawing on remarkable new science, Tinderbox overturns the conventional wisdom on the origins of this deadly pandemic and the best ways to fight it today. Timberg and Halperin argue that the same hubris that marked the colonial era has hamstrung the effort to fight HIV. From the United Nations AIDS program to the Bush administration’s historic relief campaign, global health officials have favored well-meaning Western approaches-abstinence campaigns, condom promotion, HIV testing- that have proven ineffective in slowing the epidemic in Africa. Meanwhile they have overlooked homegrown African initiatives aimed squarely at the behaviors spreading the virus. [amazon 159420327X thumbnail] reveals how human hands unleashed this epidemic and can now overcome it, if only we learn the lessons of the past.

Craig Timberg is the former Johannesburg bureau chief for The Washington Post. From his position, he visited twenty-three African nations and penned dozens of major stories about AIDS. He is now The Washington Post’s deputy national security editor.

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