Easterly whispers "uncle"

Look, I'm as impressed by Bill Easterly's clearsighted analysis as anybody else is. I'm also as put off by his failings, ranging from his jihad against Jeff Sachs (OK, Sachs is endemically wrong, but that doesn't mean that all attacks on him are right) to his fanboy support for the really whack Dambisa Moyo, to his general pissing on all forms of development assistance that aren't micro-entrepreneurially focused. 

But it seems to me that he's flailing around for a way to deal with the concrete and absolute cruelty of the shift away from funding of HIV/AIDs treatment. N'cest pas?

Easterly whimpers, a bit.

Update on Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at 11:06AM by Edmond Gaible

Prof. Easterly:

Getting more and more frustrated: Why does nobody care about AIDS prevention in Africa, when its failure disastrous? http://bit.ly/daUbfU

I can only agree. But funding for treatment and for prevention have been confounded for 15 years, at least. It doesn't take rocket science (or tenure at NYU) to predict that as you shift money away from HIV/AIDS treatment in favor of non-exotics such as maternal morbidity, you'll also be undercutting (amost wrote "gutting") prevention programs.