The death of Aids

In a week in which the world is once again invited to consider the prospect of climatic Armageddon, it would be easy to miss the news of remarkable progress against one of the greatest killers known to mankind. UNAIDS, the United Nations agency responsible for the global battle against Aids, forecast that the epidemic will very likely be over by 2030. That does not mean that the disease will be declared extinct by then — as smallpox was in 1979 and rinderpest in 2011 — but that the incidence of transmission of HIV and death from Aids will have fallen to levels low enough to constitute a chronic public health problem rather than an epidemic.

Already, worldwide deaths from the disease have fallen by a third since a peak of 2.3 million in 2005. New infections are only half what they were in 2000, while the number of people living with the disease is largely unchanged. It is estimated that 14 million life-years have been saved by treatment in the past decade, and 900,000 deaths averted last year alone. The UN can be proud of its role here: it is at its best when co-ordinating international efforts to eradicate disease.

The Aids breakthrough stands as a salutary lesson for scientists, government officials and all others who confront disease, climate change or economic collapse. Public discourse in the past 20 years has been characterised by a series of grim prophecies, none of which in the event has come even close to threatening the human race. If a disturbing trend is extrapolated far enough, it is easy to fear the worst. But humans often fail to account for their own ingenuity, the very factor that has led us into a world wealthier and healthier than any before.