AIDS and the New Core

A reader sent in the link to Nicholas Ederstadt's The Future of AIDS. Tom's comment:

Eberstadt is the alpha dog of demographers, the Daniel Yergin equivalent. This was a huge report when it came out, much like the one my old bud Dave Gordon (then Nat Intell Officer for Econ and Globalization, now Vice Chairman) of the Nat Intell Council produced in roughly the same time frame. This is why I ended the three country entries (Russia, India, China) in the original Esquire PNM article with the sentence, "And then there's AIDS" (mimicking the old sitcom tag, "And then there's Maude," truth be told).

Worth revisiting this piece (the NIC piece too, also online). The Old Core has rendered AIDS almost a chronic disease, but it remains a plague in the less resilient Gap and potentially an economic showstopper in the New Core.

As I argue consistently, the New Core sets the new rules primarily because: a) their rising trajectory gives them the most play to try new things and b) they face some amazing challenges (like pollution, disease/healthcare, etc) that they either surmount or they simply can't move ahead. So lacking for motivation and a sense of urgency--they are not. Question is, What new rules do they establish? We've seen Brazil do some interesting things in pushing for generics and patent relief (India too), so this evolution bears close watching. The 3-Sigma solutions they develop will tell us much as to how the world will ultimately handle AIDS in the Gap.

Comments

[desiree fox]

Very interesting piece.....This past semester, the Business Intelligence class at UT worked with the NNPO at ORNL on a joint project dealing with HIV/AIDS, Russia and the security threat.

[TM Lutas]

One of the unquantified factors in this problem is moral systems' ability to reduce destructive behavior. While I wouldn't go so far as to say that Putin's rather public embrace of Orthodoxy is fraudulent, it's very likely that the public acknowledgment of this is an attempt to reinvigorate christian practice and reduce extramarital sex and drug use. If you see the Church climbing in bed with the Russian state to improve prison health, it'll be a red flag announcing the partnership.

The PRC is worst off by this measure because there's no ready historical morality to turn to. The Cultural Revolution took care of that.