ABSTRACT
"Malaria keeps Africa down," one African leader told Ellen Shell, "and that is where the world wants us to be." Others were even more frank, declaring that "population control, not disease control, is US Agency for International Development (USAID) central mission in Africa." As the malaria story suggests, when the population controllers move into a poor country like Kenya or Peru, primary health care invariably suffers. "Thousands of Kenyan people die of malaria, the treatment for which costs a few cents, in health facilities whose shelves are stocked to the ceiling with millions of dollars worth of pills, Intrauterine Devices (IUDs), Norplant, Depo-Provera, and so on, most of which are supplied with American money." The highest population control "opportunity costs" are being paid at present in Africa, in the painful coin of not just malaria and other tropical diseases but, above all, in millions of cases of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS.
