Professor Roger Short has been promoting lemon juice as a
cheap and effective microbicide for use in HIV/AIDS prevention
and also as a contraceptive. Last year he discovered that he
had been scooped by a group of commercial sex workers in Nigeria
who have been using lemon juice for as long as 10 years. Professor
Short now wants to do a study of this population but due to
a withdrawal of US federal funding of studies of prostitutes
unless they undertake to give up their profession, he has to
find another source. So, he decided to launch the Mary Magdalene
Project to raise research money.
Program Transcript
Robyn Williams: Are prostitutes sinners? Do
they deserve to die of AIDS? On Tuesday in Wellington, New Zealand,
Professor Roger Short of Melbourne said otherwise. He is the
one who proposed we use lemon juice as a prophylactic against
HIV.
Roger Short: Well fascinating, and it’s
all happened within the last couple of weeks. About two weeks
ago there was a notice in The Wall Street Journal to say that
President Bush had announced that no US federal funding could
now be used for any studies of female prostitutes unless there
was a signed declaration before the study started that they
would abandon their profession forthwith. And two days ago we
got a magnificent internet announcement from the government
of Brazil who had, in the light of this statement from George
Bush, returned $40 million of US funding because they couldn’t
abide by these ridiculously restrictive prohibitions.
Robyn Williams: Well presumably the prostitutes
are the very target whom you wish to benefit and who need to
be brought on through this kind of funding.
Roger Short: Absolutely, they’re the
key to the whole thing. Let me just go back a little with what
happened to me and prostitutes. I spent 1989 in Geneva working
for the Global Program on AIDS and we had a very hush-hush secret
meeting in the World Health Organisation, the first meeting
ever in that building, of commercial sex workers from all over
the world. And we were told not to tell the press lest it got
out that there were prostitutes in the WHO building. And Jonathan
Mann, the late Jonathan Mann opened the meeting and said we
were very glad to have these men and women who had come here
from all over the world and we were met to discuss how we could
protect the general public from the high HIV infection rates
in these female and male commercial sex workers.
And a woman sitting next to me who was the chairman of the
American Prostitute’s Collective stood on her feet, slammed
her fist on the desk and said, Who the bloody hell do you think
gives it to us in the first place? And there was total silence
and Jonathan Mann rose to the occasion magnificently and said,
Thank you for that intervention. You have persuaded us that
we’re putting the barbed wire fence in the wrong place.
The whole meeting has changed: we are now looking at how we
can stop you from becoming infected. And that was such a staggering
impact on me. The WHO then sent me to Thailand to go round many
of the prostitutes, brothels in Bangkok and interview the girls.
And so I’ve spoken to quite a few hundred commercial sex
workers in Thailand, and they’re fantastic girls, I mean,
they’re just like any normal person.
Robyn Williams: Mainly village girls, aren’t
they?
Roger Short: Most of them are village girls
coming into the city because they’ll earn $200 to $300
US a night, and after two or three years of work they can go
back to the village and have a very good dowry for a very beneficial
marriage. And it makes you realise that these girls are actually
at the centre of containing the HIV epidemic.
The story then moves on to having a young Nigerian student,
Godwin Imade, who came to work with me at Monash University
for two years who went back to Nigeria to Joss, which is in
the very centre of Nigeria in West Africa. And every year Godwin
sends me a Christmas card and I usually don’t send Christmas
cards, so this last year I got his card, read it and thought,
Oh my golly, I feel so guilty about poor old Godwin, I’ll
send him a card. And I said, ‘Godwin we’re getting
these rumours out of Nigeria that commercial sex workers in
Nigeria might be using lemon juice, is there any truth in this?’
- having a longstanding interest in lemon juice.
Robyn Williams: Which we’ve had on the
Science Show before and you’ve been on Catalyst as well,
round the world.
Roger Short: That’s right and I get
no reply and forget it. And then after six months I get a 47
page email from Godwin; he’s just done a little study
on 200 female commercial sex workers in Joss, Nigeria, 81% of
whom routinely douche with lime or lemon juice immediately before
or after sex. They swear it’s an extremely effective contraceptive
and they swear that it’s protecting them against all sexually
transmitted diseases. They don’t know their HIV status
and some of them have been on it for as long as ten years.
Robyn Williams: So that’s long before
you came up with the idea?
Roger Short: Oh, I’ve been scooped by
prostitutes, and isn’t that wonderful!
Robyn Williams: It’s quite, quite amazing.
Now what do you think really are the implications of the edict
from Washington about no money to those who are actually in
the profession, the oldest profession – is it pie in the
sky? I mean, will you have any of them giving up their jobs?
Roger Short: No, I’m sure not a single
one of them will give up their job, they’re not in a financial
position to be enabled to do so. But we want to study these
prostitutes in Joss because they hold the key to understanding
whether lemon juice does or doesn’t work. And to have
a group of existing users who’ve volunteered to help in
our research is just fantastic, because there is no ethical
objection to studying an existing user to see if the practice
is beneficial - or it could even be harmful - but for God’s
sake, we need to know quickly. So in the light of George Bush’s
statement of two weeks ago we’ve decided to set up the
Mary Magdalene Fund, and Mary Magdalene you’ll remember
was a prostitute and Christ, unlike George Bush, forgave her
all her sins. And if you look at Leonardo’s painting of
the Last Supper, who is it sitting on the right hand of Christ?
It appears to be a woman and it’s thought to be Mary Magdalene.
So how lovely to have a saint of the Catholic Church who was
formerly a prostitute, who has been forgiven her sins and is
or should be the patron saint of all female commercial sex workers.
And we want to start this project within the next week or two.
I mean, week or two because the girls have volunteered, we can’t
now get any money from the United States, so I’m going
to be appealing to this conference, to these wealthy physicians
to give me their money. Let’s stoop to conquer and let’s
work on these fantastic girls because they may hold the key
as to whether lemon juice is or is not nature’s microbicide,
which could be used for a pittance all over Africa.
Robyn Williams: And so this is a general invitation
to anyone who want to contribute to the Mary Magdalene Fund
to continue this sort of work and other work around the world.
Roger Short: Absolutely and we’ve got
a web site which is www.aids.net.au which gets 4000 hits a day
and we’ve got the details about the Mary Magdalene Fund
up on the web site. And I’m going to put some of my pension
money into it and if any of your listeners would like to contribute
that would be great, and if the ABC would like to contribute
I would guarantee to provide matching funds for any contribution
that the ABC makes to the Mary Magdalene Fund.
Robyn Williams: I’ll ask Donald McDonald.
Roger Short: I think that would be wonderful.
Guests on this program:
Professor Roger Short
Department of Obstetrics
Royal Women's Hospital
University of Melbourne
http://www.research.unimelb.edu.au/mediacontact/default.asp?x=a
Further information:
Mary Magdalene Project
http://www.aids.net.au
