Saving 'Magdalen'

An Australian obstetrician who may have discovered the means to prevent the spread of the AIDS virus cannot raise the $US100,000 necessary to conduct the field trials and is applying to the UK government instead.

Professor Roger Short, of the University of Melbourne at the Royal Women's Hospital, is to collaborate with Nigeria's Professor Solomon Sagay, Dean of Medicine and Professor of Obstetrics at the Univeristy of Jos in a trial involving female sex workers in Nigeria who are already using lemon juice in an apparently successful strategy to prevent both pregnancy and AIDS. The Catholic AIDS ministry, the Australian AIDS Fund Inc, is showcasing the programme, the Mary Magdalen Project, on its website at www.aids.net.au.

It has been a long time supporter of the work of Professor Short.

"We have already proved the effectiveness of lemon juice as a microbicide in the laboratory," Professor Short told Online Catholics. "However to test the theory in humans raised enormous ethical issues and until now we have been unable to progress.

"But two years ago, a Nigerian student, Godwin Imade, told me that Nigerian female sex workers swore by lemon juice and that they had already submitted a paper to show that 81% of women studied had not contracted the virus."

This was the opportunity scientists had been waiting for: to be called the Magdalen Project, the study would involve some 400 female sex workers who would be followed for about a year. "Some of these girls will be HIV positive already and some are not," Professor Short said. "They do not know themselves. But if we can follow them all for a year we will be able to determine finally whether lemon juice kills the AIDS virus."
"With 16,000 new infections every single day - which mostly affect women and children - time is critical," Professor Short, said.

But neither the Australian Government, represented by Ausaid, nor the Catholic Church, will fund the study. Ausaid funds Australian consultants in Africa, but not field trials. Undeterred, Professor Short is approaching the Department of International Development in the UK after Tony Blair announced an increase in funding for HIV prevention in the developing world.

Australian Aids Fund Inc's Brian Haill is critical of the attitude of the Australian establishment toward Professor Short. "He is a prophet who goes unrecognised in his own country," Haill said yesterday. Professor Short is saving lives, but his work could also help prevent developing countries from economic collapse, Haill says.

"What Australia must begin to understand is that so called 'failed states' are not 'failing', they're dying."
"On our own doorstep, AIDS is already beginning to cripple PNG. In Africa, the pandemic is sweeping all before it, causing the disintegration of infrasctuture and society, with children even robbed of their teachers who are being decimated by the disease." Mr Haill said.

Australian Catholics have a golden opporutnity to make a worthwhile contribution to suppport Australian initiatives to seek to find some of the answers to the pandemic, says Haill. "Globally the Catholic Church offers so much, especially in health care. But it needs to bite the bullet and say the things that people need to hear, which includes the fact that they need protection. There are an estimated half a million AIDS orphans in Africa alone. Who will care for them?"

Professor Short recalled, "I was at a meeting of the World Health Organisation recently where former US President Clinton spoke. He said to us that the developed world must massively help the underdeveloped world, or that 9/11 would become an everyday occurance."

Brian Haill called on Catholic Australians to donate generously to the Magdalen Project. "If an Australian scientist really has found a way to prevent HIV infection in women, that really would be Good News!"