Preface

• Author: Sir George Alleyne
• Profession: Chancellor of the University of the West Indies and UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for AIDS in Latin America and the Caribbean
• Pages: 13-15

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PREFACE

It is a pleasure and a challenge to write a preface for this book. The

pleasure derives from several sources. First it is gratifying to see the

breadth and depth of Caribbean thinking that addresses one of the

fundamental problems of our time. Second the complexity of the issue

and the closeness of some of the arguments make for intellectual titillation

if not stimulation. Third, I am pleased to see a serious attempt made to

explore and explode issues that our societies and cultures have made

sensitive although they may not be inherently so.

The challenge lies in the fact that many of the assertions confront

some of my own beliefs which as a biologist I think I can justify with

data. It is always a challenge for a biological scientist to enter the lists

with social scientists, but I always take heart by reflecting on the quotation

which I have used so often and comes from one of history’s greatest

social reformers –– Virchow –– ‘Medicine is a social science. And politics

is nothing but medicine on a grand scale.’

The problem appeared to be fairly straightforward to some people at

the outset as there was no debate about the agent, the host or the mode

of transmission, thus the approach consisted essentially of attacking the

agent or interrupting the mode of transmission. Of course that approach

has been shown to be extremely simplistic and this book describes in

detail the vacuousness of that simplicity. It is pleasing to see acceptance

of the view that it is critically important to change the enabling

environment in addition to addressing the behavior of the agent or the

host.

The book makes it clear that there can be no aspect of the life of a

being that is not impacted upon or impacts the expression of sexuality.

Preface

Sir George Alleyne

Chancellor of the University of the West Indies (UWI),

UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for AIDS in Latin

America and the Caribbean