In her new article in The Times of London, epidemiologist Elizabeth Pisani, an AIDS researcher for more than 10 years, says she believes political correctness has impeded the eradication of HIV and AIDS in Africa. Specifically, that the many nations and medical groups working to prevent the spread of the disease are unwilling to express this truth: "HIV is largely a sexually transmitted infection, so there must be something different about sex in Africa."

To help make her point, Pisani notes that though the popular assumption holds that poverty and a lack of education are the main reasons AIDS has spread like wildfire throughout sub-Saharan Africa, other impoverished nations are not nearly as plagued by the illness:

The truth is that a society in which many people have two or three partners on the go at any one time will produce a bigger epidemic than a society where people may have 10 partners in five years, but only one at a time. And it’s a fact that in parts of Africa, it’s more common for both men and women to have two or three simultaneous relationships than to have serial partners. Do people behave in this way because they are poor and ignorant? Not in Bangladesh, or Bolivia, or dozens of other countries where incomes and literacy are low. Indeed, in Africa, the incidence of HIV infection is highest in the richest households and the richest countries.

Pisani says these issues go unspoken because many people consider them racist. But without acknowledging them, she stresses, finding a way to combat the spread of HIV becomes even more nebulous than it already is.

Her grim solution? "Pray for better leaders."