Bono in Conversation with Michka Assayas, page 81

An excerpt from the book:

Right now there is the biggest pandemic in the history of civilation, happening in the world now with AIDS. It's bigger than the Black Death, which took a third of Europe in the Middle Ages. Sixty-five hundred Africans are dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease. And it is not a priority for the West: two 9/11s a day, eighteen jumbo jets of fathers, mothers, families falling out of the sky. No tears, no letters of condolence, no fifty-one-gun salute. Why? Because we don't put the same value on African life as we put on a European or an American life. God will not let us get away with this, history certainly won't let us get away wiht our excuses. We say we can't get these antiretroviral drugs to the farthest reaches of Africa, but we can get them our cold fizzy drinks. The tiniest village, you can find a bottle of Coke. Look, if we really thought that an African life was equal in value to an English, a French, or an Irish life, we wouldn't let two and a half million Africans die every year for the stupidest reasons: money. We just wouldn't. And a very prominent head of state said to me: "It's true. If these people weren't Africans, we just coudln't let it happend." We don't really deep down believe in their equality.

Now, chew on THAT!