Remembering history so as not to repeat it has academic value, sure. In public policy, it can help change things for the better. And in some cases it can literally be life and death.
Six health care professionals — five nurses and a physician, all Bulgarians — are scheduled for execution shortly in Libya for a crime that would have been almost impossible for them to have committed. They were convicted of spreading HIV to patients. Health professionals are almost unanimous in pointing out that the timing of the onset of the disease indicates that the disease was transmitted before these people came to Libya, but government-operated facilities and government-paid health care workers.
More trouble for the ignorance-as-knowledge set: Evolutionary principles, applied, allow scientists to track the real origin of the infections, exonerating the convicted workers. In short, tracking the provenance of the viruses that infected the victims rules out almost all of the possibility that the accused health care workers could have played a role. Here is a link to a free .pdf paper which lays out the exculpatory science evidence, published by the eminent science journal Nature.
Will Libya’s government listen to the evidence? Nick Matzke, a research whiz at the National Center for Science Education, has a post at Panda’s Thumb laying out most of the facts, and providing links to high quality information sources. Health professionals worldwide urge Libya’s courts to legally exonerate and free the accused.
You can help. Mike Dunford at The Questionable Authority lays out actions you can take to urge Libya to free the health workers.
Please write today.
More information:
- A very learned view at Aetiology.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 