Deny the scientific consensus and what happens? People Die.
A very depressing story form South Africa came to my attention this morning. Apprently former South African president Thabo Mbeki and his administration had adopted a fringe belief that AIDS is not caused by a virus. South Africa’s AIDs epidemic is one of the largest in the globe, but to deny that this disease not caused by an infection of some sort (and thus denying it’s communicability) is literally a death sentence for those under his administration.
The stance by Mbeki’s administration caused them to turn down free drugs and grants to help deal with the problem. Ignorance of science is by no means isolated to those with strong religious convictions, but such beliefs as held by the Mbeki administration do require similar leaps of logic.
You will hear me say this a lot in the blog, but religious belief is just another species of a much bigger problem and that is one of ideology over reality.