{"id":770,"date":"2019-03-05T14:49:44","date_gmt":"2019-03-05T14:49:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsm.prolerat.org\/?page_id=770"},"modified":"2019-10-20T12:39:16","modified_gmt":"2019-10-20T11:39:16","slug":"africa-and-the-a-i-d-s-crisis","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/africa-and-the-a-i-d-s-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Africa and the A.I.D.S. Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
November 2000, U.K.\/ South Africa<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
\n\nThis article has been reproduced from the African Socialist<\/em> (December 2000), a journal of the World Socialist Movement.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
It was rather apt that the 13th International A.I.D.S.\nconference held in July 2000 should have been hosted by the South African city\nof Durban. With 24.5 million of the\n34.3 million people worldwide infected with H.I.V., Southern Africa is now the\nepicentre of a global A.I.D.S. pandemic, with South Africa itself being the\nworst affected country in the region. The sheer enormity of what is happening\nhere is something this event did much to highlight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, it was an event overshadowed by controversy:\nSouth African President, Thabo Mbeki\u2019s, support for the dissident (and,\naccording to most medical experts, wholly discredited) ideas of the American\nresearcher, Professor Peter Duesberg. Duesberg\nhas claimed that there is no link between\nH.I.V. and A.I.D.S., that the latter is simply a new label for a collection of\nold African diseases. Thus, Tuberculosis (TB) is said to account for \u201c60% of\nthe Aids-projection figures\u201d in South\nAfrica. Even the very existence of H.I.V. itself has been called into question.\nProf Luc Montagnier, the accredited discoverer of H.I.V., has\nacknowledged that his team has still not been able to isolate this virus, its\nexistence being inferred from the presence of antibodies (New African,<\/em>\nSept 2000)\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While Mbeki himself has tended – at least in public – to be\nagnostic about the connection between H.I.V. and A.I.D.S., he has fiercely\ndefended Duesberg and others who he said were being treated like \u201creligious\nheretics\u201d by the scientific establishment.\nFurthermore, to the chagrin of many of the delegates present, he has\nsuggested that poverty, rather than the sexual transmission of H.I.V.,\nis basically responsible for the A.I.D.S. crisis affecting the region.\nThis, say his critics, can only detract from efforts to promote safe sex.\nIn short, Mbeki is, in their view, inadvertently\nhelping to make an already bad situation, even worse.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assuming they are right about what causes A.I.D.S., there\nis much to be said for such criticism.\nA vigorous programme of public health education, stressing the dangers of\nH.I.V. infection through unsafe sex can, it seems, make quite a difference.\nWhat is more, it is relatively affordable – even by African standards.\nIn some African countries – notably Uganda (which, in 1987 initiated the\nfirst such programme) – this approach is apparently yielding good results. According\nto President Museveni, H.I.V. prevalence among Ugandan adults has fallen from 30\nper cent in 1992 to under 10 per cent today (The Observer, <\/em>U.K. 09 July\n2000). By contrast, H.I.V.\ninfection rates in Southern Africa – assuming such data is reliable – have been\nsteadily rising, having overtaken those in Central Africa where A.I.D.S. made\nits first appearance.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the other hand, there is equally something to be said\nfor Mbeki\u2019s standpoint. It\nis surely no coincidence that Africa, the poorest continent on the planet,\nshould contain 70 per cent of all H.I.V. cases worldwide.\nThere is clearly a significant correlation between the economic\ncircumstances created by global capitalism and the spread of A.I.D.S. itself.\nIn short, economic considerations pervade every facet of this phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Origins of an Epidemic\n\n<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
How A.I.D.S. began\nis still the subject of much controversy – at least among the majority of\nscientists who accept it is linked to H.I.V..\nIt is now generally believed by these scientists that the ancestor of H.I.V.-1\nis the simium immunodeficiency virus (S.I.V.) found in chimpanzees which is\nremarkably similar to the A.I.D.S. virus itself.\nBut how did S.I.V. come to jump the species barrier and acquire a\nfoothold in the human population as H.I.V.?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The conventional hypothesis is that this probably happened\nwhen a hunter cut his hand while preparing the carcass of a butchered chimp,\nthus allowing S.I.V. to come into contact with human blood and eventually mutate\ninto H.I.V.. However, chimps have\nbeen hunted for bushmeat for aeons whereas the earliest documented cases of\nA.I.D.S. are relatively recent – the first being in Kinshasa in 1959.\nSo some other factor had to be involved as well.\nAccording to proponents of the \u201ccut-hunter theory\u201d that had to do\nwith the conditions created by de-colonisation leading, as Edward Hooper puts\nit, to \u201curbanisation and new\nsexual interactions that allowed the newly acquired chimp virus to break free\nfrom its rural hearth, to proliferate in an urban environment and then to spread\nacross Africa\u201d (The Observer, <\/em>U.K. 09 July 2000).\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, Hooper himself favours an alternative explanation,\npioneered by the late Bill Hamilton, which appears to be gaining ground.\nIn his book, The River, he claims that the Aids epidemic was unwittingly\nunleashed by the medical authorities in the then Belgian colonies of Congo,\nRwanda and Burundi in the late fifties when they embarked on a mass anti-polio\nvaccination campaign, using an experimental oral vaccine called C.H.A.T.\nAccording to Hooper, some of this\nvaccine may have been cultured in the kidney cells of chimps and so became\ncontaminated with S.I.V.. To\nsupport of this claim, he points to the strong spatial correlation between these\nC.H.A.T. vaccination sites and the earliest distribution of A.I.D.S. cases.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the C.H.A.T. theory has yet to be conclusively proven.\nHilary Koprowski\n who led the team that developed C.H.A.T. has vehemently\ndenied that chimpanzees were ever used in this way – despite the testimony of\nwitnesses suggesting otherwise. Furthermore,\nthe few remaining samples of the vaccine held by the Wistair Institute in\nPhiladelphia have recently been shown to be free of S.I.V. contamination\n(although this could be because they came from batches developed from cultures\nother than chimp cells). Whatever the\ntruth of the matter, the C.H.A.T. theory does, nevertheless, raise an important\nquestion: why was an experimental live\nvaccine administered to a million Africans in Central Africa when it was known\nthat the vast majority of them were naturally immune to the polio virus in the\nfirst place?\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the West\nwhere, by contrast, immunity was low, paralytic\npoliomyelitis was, at the time, greatly feared. Before the arrival of a vaccine,\nsome 22,000 Americans succumbed to this disease each year.\nHooper is in no doubt that the African recipients of C.H.A.T. were being\nused as guinea-pigs to \u201csafety test a western vaccine\u201d.\nBut they were not alone. In\n1951 in what was the very first experiment\nwith a polio vaccine, 20\n\u201cmentally deficient\u201d children under the care of the New York State\nDepartment of Mental Health were used as subjects\n(The Western Australian,<\/em> 26 June 1992).\nLater on, prisoners were likewise used.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What all of these cases have in common is that they involve\ngroups that, as Hooper points out, \u201cdid not control their own destinies.\u201d In\nother words, some of the most economically vulnerable people were selected to\ncarry the burden of risk. Thus, were things to go horribly wrong,\nthe likely costs in terms of reparations and adverse publicity would be\nminimised. Such is the kind\nof society that judges the worth of a human being in terms of his or her\neconomic significance.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Research and Development Bias\n\n<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
However, it is not just a question of minimising costs but,\nalso, of maximising\nrevenue. That means closely\naligning \u201cresearch and development\u201d of new medical products to the contours\nof market demand. Thus, while\nUganda was recently chosen as the site of the first A.I.D.S. vaccines trials\nsince \u201cAfrica affords a more logical setting for trials than the U.S.A.\nor Europe\u201d, being an area of high H.I.V. prevalence, the vaccine being tested\nis against H.I.V.-1 subtype B – \u201cthe so-called Euro-American strain which is\nhardly, if at all, found in Africa\u201d – and, moreover,\nis unlikely to provide protection against other strains.\n(The Observer,<\/em> U.K., 9 July 2000)\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
True, some expertise and funding to help places like Africa\nhave been forthcoming from the International Aids Vaccine Initiative (I.A.V.I.),\nset up in 1996 \u201cin the knowledge that the multinational pharmaceutical\ncompanies were funding only research into vaccines for the West where they stand\nto make large profits\u201d (The Guardian<\/em>, U.K. 12 July 2000).\n But the I.A.V.I. is a Non-Governmental Organisation (N.G.O.)\nreliant on donations; for conventional businesses,\nhelping the poor often just doesn\u2019t pay.\nAs one U.S.A.-based biotech company, Genetic, discovered, this caused\nits share price to \u201cdrop dramatically on the stock market\u201d (New\nAfrican,<\/em> Sept 2000)\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Indeed it is the drive for profit which perhaps explains\nsome of the adverse reaction from many in the scientific establishment to the C.H.A.T.\ntheory. For if this theory were to\nprove well founded, the implications could be enormous\n– for the future of biotechnology generally and xenotransplantation\n(putting animal organs in humans) in particular.\nAs Hooper explains:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf we\ncontinue to be overhasty in our pursuit of biotechnology advances we may as a\nspecies spark a chain reaction that leads to a terminal disaster.\n There are massive commercial pressures for\nxenotransplantation to go ahead despite ever-present risks that undiscovered\nviruses may be passed from animals to humans during the transplantation\nprocess\u201d (The Guardian,<\/em> U.K. 12 Sep 2000)\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In an ideal world, the application of medical interventions\nwould be guided by the criterion of scientific objectivity and driven solely by\nthe concern to meet human needs. But\nwe live in a world in which needs are subordinated to profit, where objectivity\nmay sometimes be compromised as a result. As\nThomas Kuhn\u2019s seminal book on The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)\nably demonstrated, the logical empiricist view of science as an \u201cobjective\nprogression towards the truth\u201d belies the influence of various non-rational\nfactors. We may include among these\nthe influence of vested interests.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When research grants are dependent on toeing the right line\nand pharmaceutical firms stand to lose millions should their drugs be shown to\nbe ineffective – or worse – this\ninfluence can be considerable. Admittedly,\nsuch potential losses may appear to give firms every reason to want to avoid\nmaking mistakes at the outset.\nBut with the best will in the world mistakes can and do happen.\nDrug trials can be costly and protracted, so there will be a tendency to\ntake risks and cut corners to reduce costs.\nBut even the most rigorous trials cannot always anticipate the adverse\nside-effects of new products in the long term. Added to that, the pressure of\ncompetition means that firms are driven to establish their own brand as the\nmarket leader before their rivals can get in on the act.\nAnd that is when the problem really begins – once a firm has financially\ncommitted itself and put its reputation on the line.\n That is when commitment to\nscientific objectivity is subject to greatest strain.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some would argue this\nis now the case with the A.I.D.S. industry.\n According to Pusch Commey, Mbeki was lambasted at Durban\nbecause, he \u201cdared to threaten the very foundation upon which is built\na huge A.I.D.S. edifice that feeds on the virus….and which replicates\nas fast as the virus itself as sufficient panic is created to force governments\nand institutions to fork out more and more cash\u201d (New African Sept 2000).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Politics of A.I.D.S.\n\n<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
However, Mbeki\u2019s stance on A.I.D.S. has not gone down\nwell with the general public.\nPolls indicate a sharp decline in his personal\nratings – from 71% in May to 52% in October 2000 – with 62%\nlacking confidence in the government\u2019s efforts to halt the spread of\nA.I.D.S. . This has now prompted it\nto finally abandon its non-committal approach on the link between H.I.V. and\nA.I.D.S. and to unequivocally acknowledge that such a link exists.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet, despite this change of heart, Mbeki\u2019s own position\nhas, if anything, hardened. According to\na leaked account of a recent A.N.C. caucus meeting he asserted that \u201cthe\ntruth\u201d – that there is no proof of a causal link between H.I.V. and A.I.D.S. –\nwas \u201cbeing covered up by a conspiracy among the drug companies, backed by the\nC.I.A.\u201d and that \u201cthis international conspiracy to undermine him and South\nAfrica had been mounted because the country was seen as an emerging leader of\nthe developing nations in its challenge to the world economic order\u201d (The\nGuardian<\/em>, U.K. 25 Oct 2000)\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In similar vein, he has castigated internal critics for\nbeing racist in looking for a solution to the A.I.D.S. crisis in Africa outside\nAfrica itself – in effect, lining up behind the very international drug\ncompanies that have, in his view, sought to discredit him to further\ntheir own commercial objectives. In\nan oblique reference to Tony Leon, leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance,\nwho accused Mbeki of resorting to\n\u201csnake oil-cures and quackery\u201d to stem the epidemic, he declared:\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe white politician makes bold to speak openly of his\ndisdain and contempt for African solutions to the challenges that face the\npeoples of our continent. According\nto him, these solutions, because they are African, could not but consist of\npagan, savage, superstitious and unscientific responses typical of the African\npeople\u201d. (The Times<\/em>, U.K., 14 Aug 2000)\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For their part, critics of Mbeki maintain\nthat the position he has taken on A.I.D.S. is fundamentally\nopportunistic. It is, they say, a\ncrude attempt to shore up political support by playing the race card while\ndeflecting attention from the government\u2019s own woefully inadequate response to\nthe epidemic.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even within the A.N.C. there are many who are unhappy with\nMbeki\u2019s views. Judging\nby his government\u2019s recent volte face on A.I.D.S.,\nit would seem that this faction, (represented\nby the likes of Cyril\nRamaphosa, once Mbeki\u2019s chief rival in the A.N.C. leadership contest), has\nbecome increasingly influential within the Party, to the point of now\nover-ruling their leader on this matter.\nThis may well\n be linked to a growing sense of unease – in and outside the\nparty – with the general drift of\ngovernment policy towards non-interventionism and the free market.\nIn other words, the A.I.D.S. crisis\nmay have conveniently provided these interventionists with just the\nkind of cause celebre by\nwhich they might hope to reverse this policy drift, using public opinion on this\nissue as a lever to bring about that end.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, with 4.2 million in South Africa already H.I.V.\npositive – more than anywhere else in the world\n and growing rapidly – there is little that its government can do in\nthe short term anyway. Given the\nsheer scale of the problem, the costs of mounting\nan effective programme of prevention and treatment\nwould be just too prohibitive. Though wealthy by African standards, South\nAfrica falls well short of being a \u201cFirst World\u201d nation.\nNot only that, its recent economic difficulties means that any large\nincrease in the nation\u2019s health\nbudget now would\nsubstantially add to the tax burden on the local capitalist class and so\nfurther impair its ability to\ncompete on the global market – something that Mbeki and his friends in the\nbusiness community would want to avoid at all cost.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That may be one reason why the government has hitherto been\nso reluctant to openly acknowledge a link between H.I.V. and A.I.D.S..\nBecause to do so would make it more difficult to resist popular demand\nfor access to affordable (that is, subsidised) drug therapies, were it widely\naccepted that this was the only hope for the millions\nwho are now H.I.V. positive.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recently, the government refused to sanction the use of\nNevirapine, believed by experts to be the most effective drug to prevent the\ntransmission of H.I.V. from mother to child.\nAs a result, it is reckoned that in South Africa 5000 babies are born\neach month with H.I.V. (Sunday\nMirror<\/em>, U.K. 06 Aug 2000). Similarly,\nit has refused to provide rape victims, who have contracted the virus, with\nanti-retroviral drugs. On the face\nof it, this would seem to be either incredibly callous or else based\n on an almost wilful misapprehension\n that such drugs could be of no benefit whatsoever when\nevidence from the West suggests they have helped to slash mortality rates among H.I.V.-infected\nindividuals by 80% (The Guardian<\/em>, U.K. 30 Jun 2000).\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To save face the government initially justified\nits decision not to supply public hospitals with anti-A.I.D.S.\ndrugs on grounds that they were \u201cunproven and toxic\u201d but then, after\na \u201cbarrage of criticism\u201d, claimed that it could not afford them anyway (The\nGuardian<\/em>, U.K.\n20 Oct 2000). Yet, when five\npharmaceutical companies decided earlier\nthis year to make massive discounts on the price of Nevirapine, if its use was\nsanctioned, Mbeki still decided to decline their offer (Sunday Mirror 06 Aug\n2000). Presumably, he must have\nrecognised that, were he to take up the offer\nin question, this would\ndramatically signal his acceptance of the conventional scientific model of\nA.I.D.S. with all that that entailed.\nMeanwhile, the Democratic Alliance has cynically exploited this impasse by\nclaiming that it would distribute some\nanti-A.I.D.S. drugs free of charge but only in those municipalities that came\nunder its control after the next local elections (The Guardian<\/em>, U.K. 25\nOct 2000)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beyond Science\n\n<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
We are not suggesting Mbeki is not sincere in entertaining\ndoubts about the claims of the scientific establishment regarding the A.I.D.S.\nepidemic. After all,\nthere is not much\n point in putting up a pretence;\nunless some effective way is found\nof curbing this epidemic, its eventual impact will be utterly devastating –\nfor society as a whole and the economy in particular.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Already, comparisons are being made with the 1918 influenza\nepidemic which caused over 30 million deaths worldwide.\n The number of people likely to die of A.I.D.S. over the next 10 or\n15 years is, according to Roy Anderson of U.N.A.I.D.S., \u201cgoing\n to be many factors bigger than that\u201d (The Guardian<\/em>, U.K.\n12 Jul 2000). So far,\n18m have died of the disease – 2.6m of them in 1999 – but with every passing\nyear the annual death toll is steadily\nrising . In the main, its victims are\nyoung, economically-productive,\npeople under 35. The repercussions of this for future labour markets is\nnow becoming a matter of grave concern for bourgeois economists.\nIn South Africa\u2019s case, it will mean more than a quarter of the\nworkforce being infected with H.I.V. by 2006, leading to a shortfall of 10\nmillion workers by 2015 (The Times, <\/em>U.K. 10 Jul 2000).\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thus, even from a strictly economic standpoint , it has\nbecome desperately urgent that an effective remedy should soon be found.\nBut for such a remedy to be effective presupposes a correct understanding\nof the nature of the disease itself. Hence\nthe intensity of the debate between mainstream scientists and dissidents like\nDuesberg and the Australian, Eleni Papadopulos- Eleopulos.\nWith so much at stake it could hardly be otherwise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, vital though it may be to scientifically\nunderstand the nature of the disease, the solution cannot come from science\nalone. Indeed, if the C.H.A.T. theory is\ncorrect, there is sense in which science may be held\npartly responsible for the problem itself. The solution has also to\ninvolve a fundamental shift in the priorities of society.\nBut this is unlikely to happen without a fundamental change in the\neconomic basis of society itself.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fact is that we already have in place all the elements\nof a comprehensive package, short of an effective vaccine,\nthat, if fully implemented, could drastically curb the spread of this\ndisease and prolong the lives of those affected. As it is, such a package is\noften only partially, or patchily, implemented – for reasons that lie well\nbeyond the control of scientists themselves.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An obvious example is the cost of anti-retroviral\ndrugs which the poor simply cannot afford. According to the Panos\nInstitute \u201cat least 12 m people with H.I.V. worldwide needed drugs to suppress\nthe virus which would cost $60bn a year at current prices\u201d (The Guardian<\/em>, U.K.\n12 Jul 2000). Some A.I.D.S.\nactivists believe that the only way to force drug companies to\ndrastically cut their prices is through greater competition.\nDeveloping countries, they argue, should be allowed to \u201cbuy cheap\ngeneric copies of Aids drugs rather than\nnegotiating for small discounts from major firms\u201d.\nThe trouble is this runs up\nagainst a World Trade Organisation (W.T.O.) agreement which specifically\nprotects the intellectual property rights of these self-same firms (The\nGuardian<\/em>, U.K. 04 Jul 2000).\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, the cost of drugs is only one aspect of the\nproblem; others include access to adequate medical infrastructure (e.g medical\nstaff and equipment) and reliable drug distribution systems. Drug firms\nlook to governments to provide such facilities but rising debts incurred during\nthe 1970s and 1980s have rendered many Third World countries even less able to\ndo so.\n Forced to seek\nassistance from bodies like the I.M.F. and the World Bank, they have been\nobliged to comply with terms that require them to cut public expenditure in\nareas like health and education, in order to reduce their budget deficits.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Such \u201cstructural adjustment\u201d programmes have not only\nundermined the treatment of A.I.D.S. but, also, efforts to prevent it from\nspreading. Condoms, largely\nprovided by international donors, are often done so on the basis of\n\u201ccost recovery\u201d, limiting the extent of their distribution.\nUsually, the easiest way to acquire a condom is to purchase it\nin the local market. But\nthese are usually of poor quality or inappropriately packaged, resulting\nin the rubber\n tending to perish through exposure to direct sunlight (The\nGuardian<\/em>, U.K. 15 Jul 00)\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are others ways, too, in which poverty can assist the\nspread of A.I.D.S. The expectation among\npoor people that they are unlikely to live to a ripe old age when most around\nthem are dying young anyway makes them more likely to take risks.\nSex workers drawn into prostitution because of poverty\nmay engage in unprotected sex if the client is willing to pay more for\nthe experience. When you\ndon\u2019t know when your kids are next going to get a square meal, what\nhappens in the long term may well seem academic.\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In some parts of Africa where labour migration is prevalent\nthe risk of H.I.V. infection is high. Among\nthe mines of Southern Africa, for example, vast single-sex barracks to\nhouse mine workers are still commonplace – a legacy of\nthe colonial era. This\nencourages the use of prostitution with with\nprostitutes being bused on a Friday night to ply their trade among the workers.\nOnce infected with H.I.V., these same workers may pass on the virus to their\nspouses when they return home.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are, of course, many different factors involved in\nthe spread of A.I.D.S.. But it is\nthe effect of poverty which looms above all.\nIn this respect Mbeki does have a point.\nBut it is a point about which he can do little or nothing. Neither for that matter can his critics. It is an inescapable\naspect of capitalism.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Author: R Cox<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
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Back to the Resources Index<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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November 2000, U.K.\/ South Africa This article has been reproduced from the African Socialist (December 2000), a journal of the World Socialist Movement. It was rather apt that the 13th International A.I.D.S. conference held in July 2000 should have been hosted by the South African city of Durban. With 24.5 million of the 34.3 million…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"magazine_newspaper_sidebar_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-770","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2561,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/770\/revisions\/2561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}