PBS高端访谈:殖民主义如何影响艾滋病传播

 　　JEFFREY BROWN: And finally tonight, a new book explores the history and spread of AIDS in Africa.

　　Ray Suarez has our conversation.

　　RAY SUAREZ: Since AIDS was first identified in the West 30 years ago, its toll¹ across the world has been vicious. It's killed 25 people since 1981. An estimated 34 million are living with the virus today.

　　Just how the disease began and spread perplexed² scientists for years. A new book tracks the emergence³ of the HIV virus out of a remote part of Cameroon to what is now Kinshasa in the former Belgian Congo. "Tinderbox: How the West Sparked the AIDS Epidemic⁴ and How the World Can Finally Overcome It" connects the economies and atrocities⁵ of colonialism to that initial outbreak and to current medical approaches to the treatment and prevention of HIV in Africa.

　　Craig Timberg and Daniel Halperin, welcome.

　　DANIEL HALPERIN, author: Thank you.

　　CRAIG TIMBERG, author: Thank you for having us.

　　RAY SUAREZ: The book is about a great many things, but one of the conclusions that's gotten a lot of attention is the responsibility of colonialism for helping⁶ AIDS break out of the deepest rain forests into the rest of the world. How does that happen?

　　CRAIG TIMBERG: Well, the virus that became HIV was infecting a community of chimpanzees for hundreds of years, probably thousands of years. And scientists now theorize that it actually made its way into the human population several times over centuries.

　　As humans caught infected chimps⁷, butchered them, the blood probably passed through a cut. What's crucial about the moment that leads to the actual AIDS epidemic is that at that exact moment, there are new intrusions of steam ships and porter paths as humans move into these remote places where the chimpanzees lived.

　　And it's at that moment when HIV becomes a human epidemic, starts moving down the rivers and into the birthplace of the epidemic, if you will, in Central Africa.

　　DANIEL HALPERIN: And even to this day, there are small strains of HIV virus that exist. For example, in Cameroon, there are more strains of the virus than anywhere else in the world.

　　And some of these strains probably originated during the last century, in other words, are more recent than the strain that has caused over 99 percent of the deaths by AIDS in the world. So we hypothesized that if it hadn't been for the role of colonialism, that what we now know today as the type of HIV virus that has become this hugely global problem might likely have become like these other strains we have seen in Cameroon. It may have gone out and infected a few hundred or a few thousand people. But we may never even have known about it because it's a fairly remote part of the world.

　　CRAIG TIMBERG: And this is a place that was one of the most sparsely⁸ populated parts of a very sparsely populated continent.

　　And so were it not for the intrusions of colonialism, it's unlikely that the epidemic we know today would have come out in the way that we have seen it, and in particular that they have been able to track porter paths, where Africans are force marched to the jungle. They're carrying guns and ivory tusks⁹ and rubber. They have been able to track that to exactly the place where these chimpanzees lived.

　　And there would have no reason for those people to go there before. They went there because they were forced to go there. And they come down these porter paths, they go to these trading stations, they get on steam ships. And that becomes the actual spark for this epidemic.

　　DANIEL HALPERIN: We can now see in retrospect¹⁰ that this was going on.

　　And that perhaps gives us a little bit insight hopefully into how to approach the problem today, that, as Westerners, we are not merely bystanders who care about what happened in Africa, but in a sense we have a little bit perhaps of responsibility to help remedy a situation that we may have partly helped to have initiated¹¹.

　　RAY SUAREZ: What happened in later decades, in the '60s, '70s, and '80s, to allow HIV to become so deeply rooted in Africa and also break out to the rest of the world?

　　CRAIG TIMBERG: The two very important things happened in the middle part of the 20th century.

　　One is that HIV makes its way on the railroads, on the highways into the parts of Africa where male circumcision, which is an ancient tradition in much of the continent, is not in fact a tradition. So when you cross over the mountains, and you're suddenly in East Africa, you're in the areas where men aren't circumcised.

　　And, suddenly, instead of having infection rates of 1 percent, 2 percent, you get infection rates of 5 percent, 10 percent, 15 percent. You see the kind of the disaster that we're more familiar with, where entire villages, you know, lose a huge percentage of their adults.

　　And that kind of problem also moves into Southern Africa, where also you have lower rates of male circumcision. And the other crucial thing that happens is HIV makes its way to the Americas. It makes its way from Kinshasa in the 1960s to Haiti. And that's where eventually it works its way into the Americas, it works its way into the gay American population, and it spreads much more widely eventually.

　　RAY SUAREZ: But the shadow of colonialism is never really gone from Africa, is it? When it comes to the way we look at AIDS, look at AIDS sufferers, talk about and to the people who are HIV-positive, how do you explain that part of it in your book?

　　DANIEL HALPERIN: We believe, of course, that the Europeans and North Americans and other foreigners who are in Africa now and other places trying to help people with epidemic are in one sense completely different from the colonials who were there a hundred years ago. They're not there to rape¹² and to plunder¹³, so to speak.

　　They're there with good intentions. They want to help deal with this and other diseases. But there's unfortunately a little bit of a kind of paternalism or a hubris¹⁴ maybe that continues, a sense of, we're the experts, we know what to do.

　　RAY SUAREZ: There's been a lot of coverage¹⁵ in the book of the sort of condescending¹⁶, paternalistic, tsk-tsk way of looking at African societies where people were changing their behavior and not getting much credit for it.

　　CRAIG TIMBERG: When you look at what happened in societies when they faced this problem, several of them sort of did the math. Right? They were faced with an incurable¹⁷ disease. It was spread by sex. It was fatal.

　　And in several societies, the leaders of the societies, politicians singers, religious singers, led campaigns in which they said, if we're going to survive, we need to make changes in our own sexual behaviors as a society. And that ends up being enormously consequential¹⁸ when you're dealing¹⁹ with a sexually transmitted epidemic.

　　RAY SUAREZ: You don't have a lot of love for the efforts to use high-tech²⁰ responses, particularly in the African epidemic, whether it's antiretrovirals or universal urging to use condoms. Sort of technical fixes don't really get a lot of praise in this book.

　　And I think you conclude that they're not going to work in the African context. Why?

　　CRAIG TIMBERG: These drugs are miraculous²¹, right? This medicine brings people back from the edge of death.

　　And anyone who's watched that happen understands the power of that. And we want as many people to be treated as possible. And what—the issue we raise is, it's not enough to treat people who already have this virus. To really win the fight against the epidemic, you need to prevent the next million, the next 10 million infections from happening.

　　And, now, drugs may play a role in that, but we think that the most powerful role in the end will be played by the kind of things we're talking about here, changes in sexual behavior, increasing the prevalence of male circumcision. And that's what history shows.

　　RAY SUAREZ: The book is "Tinderbox: How the West Sparked the AIDS Epidemic and How the World Can Finally Overcome It."

　　That's a pretty big ambition in that title.

　　(LAUGHTER)

　　RAY SUAREZ: Craig Timberg and Daniel Halperin, thank you both.

　　DANIEL HALPERIN: Thank you, Ray.

　　CRAIG TIMBERG: Thank you, Ray.

　　DANIEL HALPERIN: This was wonderful.

1 toll   

n.过路(桥)费；损失，伤亡人数；v.敲(钟)

参考例句：

• The hailstone took a heavy toll of the crops in our village last night.昨晚那场冰雹损坏了我们村的庄稼。
• The war took a heavy toll of human life.这次战争夺去了许多人的生命。

2 perplexed   

adj.不知所措的

参考例句：

• The farmer felt the cow,went away,returned,sorely perplexed,always afraid of being cheated.那农民摸摸那头牛，走了又回来，犹豫不决，总怕上当受骗。
• The child was perplexed by the intricate plot of the story.这孩子被那头绪纷繁的故事弄得迷惑不解。

3 emergence   

n.浮现，显现，出现，（植物）突出体

参考例句：

• The last decade saw the emergence of a dynamic economy.最近10年见证了经济增长的姿态。
• Language emerges and develops with the emergence and development of society.语言是随着社会的产生而产生，随着社会的发展而发展的。

4 epidemic   

n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的

参考例句：

• That kind of epidemic disease has long been stamped out.那种传染病早已绝迹。
• The authorities tried to localise the epidemic.当局试图把流行病限制在局部范围。

5 atrocities   

n.邪恶，暴行( atrocity的名词复数 )；滔天大罪

参考例句：

• They were guilty of the most barbarous and inhuman atrocities. 他们犯有最野蛮、最灭绝人性的残暴罪行。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The enemy's atrocities made one boil with anger. 敌人的暴行令人发指。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

6 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

7 chimps   

（非洲）黑猩猩( chimp的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Chimps are too scarce, and too nearly human, to be routinely slaughtered for spare parts. 黑猩猩又太少，也太接近于人类，不可以作为人器官备用件说杀就杀。 来自英汉非文学 - 生命科学 - 医学的第四次革命
• And as nonprimates, they provoke fewer ethical and safety-related concerns than chimps or baboons. 而且作为非灵长类，就不会产生像用黑猩猩或狒狒那样的伦理和安全方面的顾虑。 来自英汉非文学 - 生命科学 - 医学的第四次革命

8 sparsely   

adv.稀疏地；稀少地；不足地；贫乏地

参考例句：

• Relative to the size, the city is sparsely populated. 与其面积相比，这个城市的人口是稀少的。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The ground was sparsely covered with grass. 地面上稀疏地覆盖草丛。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 tusks   

n.（象等动物的）长牙( tusk的名词复数 )；獠牙；尖形物；尖头

参考例句：

• The elephants are poached for their tusks. 为获取象牙而偷猎大象。
• Elephant tusks, monkey tails and salt were used in some parts of Africa. 非洲的一些地区则使用象牙、猴尾和盐。 来自英语晨读30分（高一）

10 retrospect   

n.回顾，追溯；v.回顾，回想，追溯

参考例句：

• One's school life seems happier in retrospect than in reality.学校生活回忆起来显得比实际上要快乐。
• In retrospect,it's easy to see why we were wrong.回顾过去就很容易明白我们的错处了。

11 initiated   

n. 创始人 adj. 新加入的 vt. 开始，创始，启蒙，介绍加入

参考例句：

• He has not yet been thoroughly initiated into the mysteries of computers. 他对计算机的奥秘尚未入门。
• The artist initiated the girl into the art world in France. 这个艺术家介绍这个女孩加入巴黎艺术界。

12 rape   

n.抢夺，掠夺，强奸；vt.掠夺，抢夺，强奸

参考例句：

• The rape of the countryside had a profound ravage on them.对乡村的掠夺给他们造成严重创伤。
• He was brought to court and charged with rape.他被带到法庭并被指控犯有强奸罪。

13 plunder   

vt.劫掠财物，掠夺；n.劫掠物，赃物；劫掠

参考例句：

• The thieves hid their plunder in the cave.贼把赃物藏在山洞里。
• Trade should not serve as a means of economic plunder.贸易不应当成为经济掠夺的手段。

14 hubris   

n.傲慢，骄傲

参考例句：

• There is no safety in unlimited technological hubris.在技术方面自以为是会很危险。
• The very hubris of French claims alarmed the other powers.法国贪婪的胃口使其他大国惊恐不安。

15 coverage   

n.报导，保险范围，保险额，范围，覆盖

参考例句：

• There's little coverage of foreign news in the newspaper.报纸上几乎没有国外新闻报道。
• This is an insurance policy with extensive coverage.这是一项承保范围广泛的保险。

16 condescending   

adj.谦逊的,故意屈尊的

参考例句：

• He has a condescending attitude towards women. 他对女性总是居高临下。
• He tends to adopt a condescending manner when talking to young women. 和年轻女子说话时，他喜欢摆出一副高高在上的姿态。

17 incurable   

adj.不能医治的，不能矫正的，无救的；n.不治的病人，无救的人

参考例句：

• All three babies were born with an incurable heart condition.三个婴儿都有不可治瘉的先天性心脏病。
• He has an incurable and widespread nepotism.他们有不可救药的，到处蔓延的裙带主义。

18 consequential   

adj.作为结果的，间接的；重要的

参考例句：

• She was injured and suffered a consequential loss of earnings.她受了伤因而收入受损。
• This new transformation is at least as consequential as that one was.这一新的转变至少和那次一样重要。

19 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。

20 high-tech   

adj.高科技的

参考例句：

• The economy is in the upswing which makes high-tech services in more demand too.经济在蓬勃发展，这就使对高科技服务的需求量也在加大。
• The quest of a cure for disease with high-tech has never ceased. 人们希望运用高科技治疗疾病的追求从未停止过。

21 miraculous   

adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的

参考例句：

• The wounded man made a miraculous recovery.伤员奇迹般地痊愈了。
• They won a miraculous victory over much stronger enemy.他们战胜了远比自己强大的敌人，赢得了非凡的胜利。