When we talk about the AIDS epidemic the face that is presented is Gay men. However, world wide the face is mostly poor Africans and Indians. One of the problems with the politization of AIDS is that we attach a political message to a disease.
India has a growing problem with AIDS and the numbers cited in the book Planet India may be as high as 9,000,000. The book also cites 38% of the people who have the disease are women. The vast preponderance of these women caught the disease from their husband. The face of AIDS in India is quite different than the face of AIDS in the West.
India has problems delivering services in general to the extreemly poor. However, unlike Africa there is political stability and that alone helps enormously in delivering treatments. The size and scope of India's enormous population make this problem an enormous challenge.
AIDS is an expensive but treatable disease for now. The virus is constantly mutating and there are no long term guarantees that the current drug cocktails will stave off more aggressive strains.
My problem with the AIDS effort in the USA is that other causes of human misery have been underfunded. Stroke, heart disease and diabetes kill more people than AIDS and we should devote more efforts there. Alzhiemers, Parkinsons and many other diseases
have had resources diverted by the rush to anything AIDS related.
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Not only does AIDS have a political face, it also has a religious face as well.
I remember when AIDS was referred to as GRIDS or gay cancer. There were many prominent evangelical ministers claiming AIDS to be God's revenge for immoral acts. Some still do..
Both of these (political/religious), have stigmatized the victims of AIDS and has hindered progress.
Do the inhabitants of India understand the means of transmission of the disease?
Duck
AIDS should have been treated as a medical issue without the civil rights overtones. The antics of ACT UP and the Beneton ads with Reagans face covered in AIDS lesions were disgraceful. There are also members of the NOI who have been running around with conspiracy theories about AIDS in labs or Jewish doctors.
Most of the same Christians who talk about condoms donate to Church efforts that help AIDS patients. However, that being said the notion that promicuity and unsafe practices do not cary extra risk is misguided.
Left out of the AIDS discussion are the larger issues of political instability and corruption interfering with the practice of medecine. The AIDS situation in Africa is 100 times worse than India as the political instability makes treating patients mission impossible.
Even where condoms are plentiful the diseases still rages on. People do not hold themselves accountable for their actions.
167 to his credit blamed nobody other than himself. May he live out his remaining time in peace.
Want to Cure AIDS?
Stop having premarital unprotected sex, stop doing drugs, and take some responsibility.
It's pretty simple.
Rob
You are 100% right on a practical level. However, humans are flawed creatures by nature and will depart from responsable behavior.
The question is what do we do with those people who fall off the beaten path.
The other side of the coin is also nauseating with every AIDS patient being portrayed as an angelic victim. Somewhere in between is the realization that we are flawed creations and many of us do not behave as we should. Yes many people have contracted a dreadful disease but we should be as humane and make the remainder of life as peaceful as possible.
Sadly, in India many of these women got AIDS from their husbands.
The women do know how the disease is spread but sometimes your partner lets you down.
One of the things I have admired about Christianity in general was the commitment to Orphans and the sick. Life itself is to be valued even when those who live it err. Maybe I have read too much Alvin Schmidtt.
Ducky
Condoms alone does not address the issue of responsability. To his credit 167 acknowledged his tragic error.
Somewhere in between the view that every AIDS patient is an Angelic victim or the converse every AIDS patient is the victim of Satanic behavior is sanity.
People should be responsable for their actions. All people just are incapable of behaving up to par. Hummans just fail by nature and if they didn't they wouldn't be human.
The question is what can be done to
help those suffering.
The disgraceful antics of ACT UP were the counterpart to those who claimed AIDS was Gods revenge.
The author of the book Planet India sugests that the vast preponderance of female AIDS patients were married women. The question about knowledge of transmission misses a larger point. Marriage itself is a trust the realization that those you trust betrayed that trust may be a Bridge too Far or just all too human.
The problem is not knowledge in the case of AIDS in India it may be about the nature of man itself.
Certainly the overwhelming percentage of those women who got the disease thought they were behaving appropriately. Humans fail
and all creations of humans such as machines fail.
The issue is larger.
The self righteous screeching rhetoric from the Gay community and the paranoid foolishness of the NOI are the counter parts to AIDS is Gods revenge. However, to ommit that there is a level of responsability is also misguided.
plucky-What about the fact that health departments were told to NOT treat AIDS as an STD? No health dept. follow up, meant that a lot of people had HIV or AIDS AND DIDN'T FIND OUT UNTIL THEY HAD PASSED IT ON TO HOW MANY OTHERS?
I know someone who was working for the Health Dept. in Orlando, he told me that they were forbidden to do the follow up visits with partners. And this was in the mid-to late 80's! If standard procedure had been followed, we may not have had the mess we have now! But NO, gays wanted it treated politically, and look where we are today! Oh, btw, gays also fought the shutting down of "bath houses" where it was spreading like wildfire!
Irresponsible decisions and caving in to a particular lobby group, in the 80's and 90's led to this.
Let the responsible parties come out and say, "Sorry, we blew it!"
tmw
Ducky
Homo haters. Is this what you are calling the boys in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Cuba and Zimbabwe now. Lets see leftists praised Cuba's health system that placed AiDS patients in luxury gulags and Gays in mental health facilities.
Ducky, contrary to your opinion, I do not avoid this issue, rather it's about being realistic about the root causes of HIV and AIDS. Where you and other people on the far left struggle, is that life is about self control and responsibility. For everything we do has a just reward, just a fact.
I do believe,to have self control and personal responsibility is simple.
Beak you are also correct to say by nature we as Humans are flawed. However irresponsible behavior should not be rewarded with "I'm a victim!". This has nothing to do with my Christian Values, this has everything to do with as Human Beings we have a responsibility to take care of ourselves, and if we do not enact at least some self control and personal responsibility, we can only blame ourselves when we contact things like HIV and AIDS.
Ducky
If gay rights was at the top of your adgenda than Gay rights in those places should be addressed. Moreover, I have always stressed personal responsability.
Do note that the notion that people who are ill has changed from Jesus's time and example.
Previous to Christianity the cause of illness was divine and sick people were viewed as cursed. The very notion of tending to the ill itself is an outgrowth of Christianity and those thumpers you rail at.
Christian charities have improved the lot of many who suffered from AIDS. The antics of the Act Up crowd and the hateful left could be charitably described as a self righteous temper tantrum. The Catholic Church helped more aids patients than Benneton, Larry Kramer or Act Up.
Who is a thumper? Religious Christians do not have to be controlled. Left to their own devices they build schools, hospitals, orphanages and are a positive force. I contrast this with the people who build Gulags, Killing Fields and piles of body parts.
plucky-Did I bring G*D into my comments? Nope, you did, to get back to basics, do it G*D's Way or suffer consequences. HE said, one man+one woman till death do them part, not hop from bed to bed. I figure that HE made us, HE knows us and might just want the best for us! I have been a widow for over 4 yrs., I have not dated, and I certainly have not entertained another man in my bed! Do I hate men, or lovemaking? FAR from it, but if I want the best relationship, I do it right. Which means NO BED HOPPING! I respect myself too much to treat myself as leftovers!
tmw
Religious people are religious for a reason ducky. Don't try to blame us for other people who don't follow the practices of religion (abstinence/ monogamy). If promiscuous people aren't getting condoms... it ain't our fault. It's yours. You can go into the schools and hand them out if you can get it through the legislature. We can't go and and confiscate them. So get yourself an NGO and fund all the condoms for the world you want... but don't tax and xpect us to pay for your "communion wafers".
Death cuts the number of AIDS infection in Africa faster than anything.
Yeah, I've never attended a church that asked the government for the least little thing, including wine or grape juice or matzos or communion wafers...on the other hand, even our tiny church sends short term missionaries(like nurses)to schools and orphanages in Haiti. We send over medical supplies and such, and we have never asked for one government cent to buy one tube of neosporin!
So you really are blowing smoke, nothing you have said is relevent and I have a headache and really don't want to continue trying to have a conversation with a closed mind.
tmw
Duck,
AOW questions whether India knows the transmission method and at the same time implies that she is forming opinions without understanding the implications of in utero infection.
You presume too much.
Back when I was in college, I contributed money (not much--I didn't have much to spare as I worked my way through school) to a fund to help Indian women control the burgeoning birth rate. The contraceptive device was the IUD. Well, when those women found out that IUD's were preventing pregnancy, many of the women had the devices removed.
As I understand it, the primary mode of transmission of AIDS in India is that of the sexually transmitted type. How is that method of transmission being addressed? Or is it being addressed?
In India the problem is with married women catching it from their husbands. I guess the assumption is the point of contact is sex workers.
MR B
That is the flip side of the problem. Prolonging the life at high expense does increase the probability of the spread.
TMW
As a Christian you might build a school or a hospital shame on you.
Beak,
The AIDS virus has as much right to flourish in hospitable environments, such as within the upper colon fecal impactions of practicing homosexuals, as mosquitoes do in an old tire.
In the western world I would say that this is almost a 99% homo disease. Sure there are exceptions, but not many. The gay community refuses to take the issue seriously and they don't really give a damn about prevention--it's more about find a cure. Which is why the disease persists. Granted most gay men are so vanity-driven that it's probably their goal to get the disease from their boyfriend so they won't have to die old and withered. Elton John and Ian McKellen being exceptions I suppose. To quote a doctor: To have unprotected heterosexual intercourse is foolish, to have homosexual intercourse is downright suicidal.
Beaker-I'm sorry! Really, really sorry, I-I-I-I-I try not to, but I just can't help it...it just comes out, I can't help it!
Okay, I'm ashamed of myself, for not going for an orphanage...too!
tmw
Government is mr. ducky's answer for everything. If the government doen't do it... it can't be done (or isn't being done right).
The only tool in a "progressives" toolbox is a hammer.
Kuhnkat,
It's difficult to get gay people to use birth control, isn't it?
"One of the problems with the politization of AIDS is that we attach a political message to a disease."
That is because homosexuals attached a political message to sexual preference first. And now we are supposed not just to tolerate them (which would be alright if they'd keep themselves to themselves) but grant them not just equal, but preferable treatment.
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